Forever: Stendan AU Series
by Busman's Holiday
Summary: A series of Stendan AU stories based on Tumblr fanart. Each Chapter will be a a new stand-alone story. All M rated. First story in series is Student/Teacher.
1. Lessons

_This story makes up part of an AU series which is inspired by arts I've made on Tumblr (memorieswarm). I'm attempting to post a new AU story at least once a fortnight to go with the fanart I've made. Each "Chapter" of this series will be a completely separate story so it's your choice whether you just want to read one, all or pick and choose. All are Stendan, all contain sex (a given?) and most will contain happy endings (I'll let you know if not). This is the first time I've written a series like this and I've tried to make them long and self contained so I really hope you enjoy and I'd love you feedback._

_A/N: This story deals with a student and teacher relationship so if you're uncomfortable with that or the age gap then this might not be for you!_

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**Lessons**

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The first warning they'd give you in your training would have been about boys like Steven Hay. Cocky and smart mouthed with impossibly red lips the shade of his blazer. He'd swagger the corridors with that known air of confidence saying "Sir," like a half-fluttered come-on. He lifted his head with ample street-wisdom to kid yourself he was old enough to corrupt. He wore those polyester school trousers low-slung and snug. You wondered if this was a brazen show of having his worked his way through the rugby team, or was he holding out for trust and experience? You fantasised that he was - the tight virgin you'd teach to cum and break the law for.

In all your years of teaching you'd never once been tempted and you were thankful for that. But on that first day of six-month supply at Hollyoaks High – a rather tatty comp filled mostly with upper-middle Chester teens – you'd both stuck out from the rest. He'd sat at the front of the class; unusual for his sort – you'd been pre-warned about him in an email from the head: _troublemaker, truant, bully, disruptive, attitude problem, aggressive_. All things that had once been written in your school report. His shirt was rolled up to the elbows when he lent on them, his desk free of books. You were grateful for the excuse to speak to him to ask why he'd come to class without his stuff.

It wasn't your imagination that he was flirty. His tie was draped over the table as he sat forward, looking up at you with eyes lined dark with lashes. He wasn't supposed to look at you like that.

All the male teachers had been given that tale about girls – describing the use of their sexuality, their hormones as a weapon to blow your life apart – but in this talk, they'd never mentioned a boy so open and threatening in his homosexuality that he'd undo you. Steven Hay didn't live in fear of being the victim of homophobia at school; he'd kick someone's face in without question if there were whispers. Everyone know, but no one dared question it.

You tripped and stumbled over words and facts and basics all lesson. But that Year 11 class would think you a menace. You caught him staring, lips parted and smug with himself so you screamed at the class for quiet – throwing a textbook to the wall. They worked in fearful and shuffling silence for the rest of the hour. Steven made excuses to creep closer to the desk at the front – pencils to sharpen, equipment to borrow. You escaped him by ushering together a focus group that he wasn't a part of, even though he was failing too and it was in your nature and job to help him, but you watched him on the periphery writing notes and leaning back on his chair. He studied you more than his books. You teetered on the edge of wanting to punish him for tempting you and push him out of your eye line so he couldn't drag you down further.

Steven became impossible to avoid.

You started to wonder if you were being stalked. Or worse, if _you_ were stalking Steven.

It was after the staff meeting on the first week when you saw him loitering outside the Head of Year's office. His shirt tails drooped untucked and his face was flushed. He straightened up when you passed, deliberately looking ahead.

"Detention again," he said, forcing you to stop a few paces ahead of him. You looked to the side to see him playing with the tip of his maroon tie.

"You wanna knuckle down, kid," you said, rocking on your soles and firing up excuses in your brain as to why you couldn't stay and chat. Technically speaking it was school policy not to engage with pupils waiting outside an office to receive their punishment – they'd see it as a privilege of some sort. As if conversing with a teacher was anyone's idea of a privilege!

"Borin' though, innit?" he looked up from his fidgeting then and stared at you with his tongue perched between his teeth. If you were to study his eyes longer than you allowed yourself, you'd think they shone blue with wickedness.

You paused, half turned to face him and thought you ought to sound like pally, less supply teacher. The friendly teacher routine was going to get you on the register whether you made it happen or he pushed you to it.

"Boring?" you said, feeling a chill wash over you. "What's boring is seeing you repeating your same mistakes over and over. Try shutting that smart mouth of yours and _get smart_ instead." With that, you walked away and didn't see him shrink into sullenness.

After the weekend you barely saw him around school and when he'd been given a warning about his attendance (you were alerted to it by the notice pinned up in the staffroom) you were almost surprised when he turned up for maths.

He started out on the wrong foot, passing notes, throwing things, texting and calling out. When you were at the whiteboard, he was causing laughter and when you stopped to ask him a question to trip him up, he shrugged.

"Dunno. Don't see the point." His chair was rested on the desk behind, elbows too, and he chewed gum defiantly. "Why do we have to learn all this pointless shit?"

You threw the pens to your desk. Hands predictably on your hips.

"And the way you're teaching is dead confusing."

The class disrupted in sniggering agreement.

"When's Mr Landers coming back?" He has a snarl in his expression, eyes piercing right through your cool. Mr Landers (nervous breakdown) wasn't due back until September and Year 11 had you for a further two months.

"You wanna get up here and do a better job, be my guest." You took a step to the side, glaring him down. If he'd been ten years older you would have had his arm twisted behind his back for the lack of respect. But then when he shrugged and you saw the fiery rebellion in him, you wrenched open the door, jamming it open with a wedge and then picked up his bag and books and threw them out the door.

"Get out! Go on, go!"

He jumped on and over the desk to exit the room, but before he did, he was lifting the pen from your pocket. You could have sworn he did it just to touch you. "Lost mine. I'll give it back later," he said and you slammed the door behind him. Rule one was never let them see you lose your cool and he'd made you break that rule twice already. You were left wondering just how many rules he'd make you break.

When he returned the pen to you at the end of the day, it hung from his mouth like a cigarette. "You really want this back?"

You picked up the hand sanitizer and waved it in his direction.

"It's not catchin' y'know," he said looking pointedly at you, "The gay bug."

You stood unmoving in your surprise that he was so upfront with you. "It's not about that," you said, knowing how fucking PC the school policies were. "I don't want your spit on my stuff."

He grinned to make your insides curl and you looked away, hiding in the pile of books to mark.

He hung around in the doorway; you sighed. "Go bug someone else, will you?"

"You here tomorrow, Mr Brady?"

"Tomorrow and every other day until I don't have to look at your sorry face again." You didn't glance up from the books.

"Mint," he said and left.

His name was up in the staff room again. He'd been cautioned at the weekend for theft from a sports shop. The majority of teachers rolled their eyes, a minority of soft-touches had sympathy and you sat there wondering what he'd look like in just a pair of drawstring tracksuit bottoms. Steven became the focus of the Wednesday night staff meeting too, he was scraping Ds across the board and the head wanted a C minimum in his English and Maths.

"As long as he knows how to work out his cut when he's selling smack," said one of the P.E. teachers with a smug grin, tucking into the biscuits. "Well, it's where he'll end up!"

"That's exactly the direction we're trying to avoid," Patrick said. "Small tutor groups, five kids maximum. That's the plan. One hour afterschool for maths and English." He looked at you and the teachers involved. "You'll get overtime."

"Not even a please?" asked one of the English teachers in vain. She had a soft spot for Patrick.

"It's about pulling together for the students. I'm sure you can give them that," Patrick said, shuffling his papers as if ready to move onto the next agenda.

"Hang on a second!" you said, even if you were temping and should probably keep quiet, you weren't going to let this slip. "That's it? We get no say?"

Patrick fixed you with a glare that only you could match. "Unless you want me to find another supply to replace you and do the complete job then I suggest you rethink your attitude, Brendan." He looked around the glumly silent room. "That's settled then. Compulsory tutor groups start Monday at three-forty-five."

All you could think come Monday was thank god you weren't alone in the room with him. The edge of his hair that touched his skin had gone black with sweat and he was late changing for P.E., so he of course arrived to your class late, pink and a mess. You made him stand in the doorway and tuck in his shirt and he begged you for a drink and you obliged, snatching your gaze away when he sucked from a water bottle.

Being such a small group, of what they would have called in your day the thickos but now talked about "differently abled", you weren't able to ignore Steven. You had to pour over his scruffy handwriting and decipher digits, rubbing out his errors and waiting for him to pencil in corrections. His light bulb moments made him pleased and they made you flutter. But you were harsher with him, more impatient, degrading. They'd have you for mistreatment of him, but Steven took it and kept trying. And the more he tried to impress you, the worse he made it. You resented him for it – he was making you edge closer to danger every day.

::: :::

The more you were grizzly with him, the more he didn't seem to mind. His marks improved, not enough to move his grade but enough so that you noticed. You found yourself relaxing into your tutor group sessions and slowly you despised them less for eating into your free time. You slipped up and talked about yourself once or twice but Steven always pushed it with a question too many. You'd snap, making everyone but Steven jump, and sink to your desk with a coffee and mark the day's books. He'd watch you for a moment and then when your eyes met, he smiled to himself and got back to his scribbling.

One Monday the McQueen girl in the group, the one with white-blonde hair and a gob on her, dragged you reluctantly into a conversation about Big Brother. You'd vaguely flicked over it during a night of microwave lasagne for one and knew enough about it to know you'd rather watch your own faeces. Steven and she had wandered into the lesson jabbering about who was fittest and who should win.

"Sir sir sir," she said, dashing over with her arm around Steven's shoulders. He had a split lip today from a punch up in the playground, everyone knew he'd started it.

You rolled your eyes and signalled for her to continue.

"Sir, who'd you think is gonna win Big Brother?"

You were about to lecture her on TV rotting her brain, but thought better of it after counting her braincells. "The Irish one. For obvious reasons." You had no idea if there even was an Irish one.

She grimaced. "Minging." She dragged Steven to his seat before you had a chance to say anything more, but your skin prickled when you watched the two of them whispering conspiratorially. It had to be about you, didn't it?

He was always there in the corridors with his two girl friends, whispering and grinning and you were sure he hushed up whenever you got near.

You were worse to him. And when he got close in class, for innocent reasons, you flinched like he was infected.

He hung around after class after the next tutorial, Michaela wasn't there to cling onto him, and it was then, he did the worst thing possible.

He spent too long tidying up equipment and when the room was silent, just the two of you packing away, he spoke.

"Mr Brady, have I done something wrong? Cos I thought I was getting better, but it's like…you're being funny with me?"

You let the books drop back into pile with a soft thud and looked up at him. He was closer than you'd realised. Too close.

"No, no I'm not. Time to run along home, Steven." You smiled at him tightly with no teeth showing. The mask before the massacre.

"I'm tryin', I am. I'm crap at maths, me."

"You're not," you said and you let your eyes close for a second too long.

He was even closer. "Cos I think you're a well good teacher. I didn't really get it before, but…I do now. I like knowing. I like being right." You could smell him. And you could hear the cleaner's vacuum banging against the wall in the corridor and the clock ticking. You saw him step a little nearer and then he reached out, placing his hand over yours. His blazer sleeve rubbed your shirt when his stroked his fingers across the back of your hand.

Then you shoved him, hard against the wall and not the way he wanted. It was the first time you'd ever seen fear in Steven Hay's eyes.

"It's you isn't it?! Starting all those rumours about me?!"

"What?! What rumours?!"

"I know there's graffiti, Steven! I've seen it. And you and that gobshite gossiping," You were spitting these accusations behind gritted teeth.

"We wasn't! And there's always graffiti. 'Mr Blake's a paedo', Miss Gilmore's a dyke'. I've done nothing!"

You loosened your grip on him and backed off.

"What's wrong with you?" he said, picking up his stuff and straightening out his uniform. "I thought we were the same, alright?! I thought there was – oh fuck it! – don't matter!" And with that, Steven Hay crashed out of class and you spent the evening looking for a new job.

::: :::

The irony of the school needing a supply to cover you - a supply teacher - was not lost on you as you called in for a week off sick. You knew a dodgy doctor; kids weren't the only one to forge a sick note. But if you'd expected the atmosphere in class to change with your week bunking off, then you were mistaken. All it took was the hint of Steven's name before your stomach lurched again.

But he wouldn't so much look at you, let alone come near enough so that you could smooth things over. He'd once been the last to leave class, but now he couldn't get out quick enough. You spent long lunchtimes sitting apart from the other staff hoping someone would bring Steven up into conversation. It was that timid, newly-qualified English teacher who mentioned his erratic moods that gave you the idea.

"It's the head's job usually," the caretaker said with a sniff. You'd caught him at the perfect time, when he was eager to go home for his lunch. He was gathering his things and trying to push past you to the door.

"All the same," you said with a fixed grin. "Blake asked me – check with him if you like." You knew he'd never dare waste Patrick's time. "I tutor the boy, Blake hardly knows him. He thought it best for me to check." You didn't realise the hint of possession in your words until you'd said them.

The caretaker handed over the master key with a laboured sigh. "Drugs, eh?" he said. "Hardly surprising comin' from him."

You headed to the lockers. You knew without hesitation which one was his; you'd watched him lean up against it enough times. Checking the corridor was clear you opened up the locker and loaded it with a bag of pills (another favour from the dodgy doctor). Some situations just had to be engineered.

Straight after lunch, you started your Year 11 maths lesson with the announcement of locker checks – telling them that someone in the year group was seen with suspicious pills. You bullshitted with the best, doing the usual boring routine of asking if anyone had anything to confess before being publically humiliated. The lad at the back who you knew was the school's dealer was too stoned to care and you weren't going to even look in his locker. You lead the class to the lockers – Blake was in a meeting and you knew all the other teachers were too cliquey to so much as speak to you – and made a show of checking the first row.

Steven's was the sixth locker you opened and you anticipated the fallout and shut it down before it happened.

"I've been set up! I don't even do drugs! I swear, I've never seen them in my life," he said, looking to his classmates for support.

You pocketed the pills, slamming the locker and placed a finger to your mouth. "Keep the confessions and pleadings til later. After school, Steven." Then you marched the rest of them back to quadratic equations.

Steven appeared, weary at your classroom, at three thirty-five.

"You're late."

He looked like he had the whole world pressing on his shoulders. He closed the door under your instruction and sat on the desk opposite yours.

You dropped the pills on the table. "You wanna explain why I found these in your locker?"

"I already told ya! They're not mine," he said, petulant. He wouldn't even look at you these days.

"So you keep saying. What am I meant to believe, they were delivered there by the drug fairy?"

"Funny."

You stared at him and waited, until finally he made eye contact with you.

"I _swear_. They're not mine."

"And I want to believe you. I really do." Teaching was like acting and you pulled off earnest with Oscar intentions. You folded your hands together on the desk. "Except, I _know_ you've been talking about me, like a little wasp. Buzz buzz buzz." You stood up now and walked the path in front of his desk. His mouth was parted, eyes shifting with embarrassment. "Wondering about me with your little girlie pals. 'Sir isn't married. Sir looks at me funny. Sir gives me attention. Sir touched my hand.' _I know_. So if you're lying about the rumours, then how do I know you're not lying about the pills?!"

You leant on the end of the desk he sat on, the space between you crackling.

"I'm not," he said, pouting like a child. "On my life, I'm not."

You straightened up. "I'll flush them. And I won't tell Mr Blake. Only if you promise this will never happen again."

"I promise. Cross my heart."

You touched him on the cheek briefly and smiled. "Good."

::: :::

His latest mock was three marks shy of a C. You almost wanted to doctor it so you could keep him down a little longer. You liked his dependency on you. And behaviour between you was treading those dangerous habits again. Lingering. You'd almost given up trying to fight it, you were convinced that if he came onto you again, you'd not push him away.

But he didn't. And you hated him for it. You started picking on any male he was close with, wondering if he'd given up on his pursuit of you and was getting it from one of them instead. You thundered around school in your own solitary storm cloud, barking at anyone who got in your path.

You gave him his latest test back and he _glowed_. Despite yourself you grinned at him. And at the end of your next tutorial he had a present for you that he'd had stashed in his rucksack all day.

He was sheepish handing it over. It had _Brendan_ written on the card which made you feel a dizzying alarm.

"You'll see when you open it, Mr Brady. I thought it would be better if it weren't obvious it were from one of your pupils." He left your classroom with a smile you wanted to bottle.

The card was the sort that had been bought with coppers in a discount shop but when you opened it you stared at the words until you'd see them in your head for hours after.

_Brendan,_

_Thank you for everything. I mean everything. You make it more than just about the numbers…you make it about me. _

_Ste x_

Inside the parcel was three whiskey miniatures with the security tag on. He'd nicked you alcohol from a shop that wouldn't even serve him, for his being underage.

You drank all three that night and masturbated furiously thinking about him. You had to have him and you couldn't wait much longer.

::: :::

You didn't teach Steven on a Tuesday, he had another maths teacher – one who couldn't cope with his behaviour and one he hated and you weren't surprised to see him sat outside the class doing his work on the floor.

"We meet again young Steven," you said. You were far too casual with him when you'd been awake half the night wanking yourself dry imagining fucking him raw.

"Tell me about it," he said grumpily. "Stupid cow."

You clicked your tongue; you should scold him for that, but she _was_ a cow.

"What are you struggling with?"

"Everything. As usual."

You sighed, sitting beside him on the floor and picking up his book. He was missing out one of the vital steps in the problem and you talked him through it. There was that blissful lightbulb moment.

"See. Now I get it. Why can't she just teach it like that?"

"Probably because you were pissing about."

"Weren't!"

You looked at him and he grinned. "I was only having a laugh."

"Ya not in there to have a laugh. You're there to work."

"I have a laugh with you, though," he said and you were aware suddenly of his knee touching yours. You didn't move it.

"Thank you for the whiskeys by the way. Hit the spot."

He had a look in his eyes which told a thousand potentials. "I hope your girlfriend didn't mind."

"You know very well I haven't got one." You pressed your knee against his and neither of you looked away.

The classroom door opened and Ms Draper paused, startled at seeing you sat there. You leapt up. "Just ironing out a few errors," you said and ignored her sour expression as she told Steven to get in, sit at the back and shut up.

At lunchtime Steven gave a Year 9 lad a black eye and a bloody nose. It was a fair scrap, but Steven was taller, faster and lankier so landed the first and brutal punch, finding himself coming out of it rather unscathed. Mr Blake was off site on a course (when was he not?) and you found yourself dragged into sorting out the mess. Steven had already had his stern talking too, his punishment delivery (a week's suspension) and now, being the twenty-first century bollocks school that they were, someone needed to teach him wrong from right and give him the positive reinforcement chat. The one where you told him how to be a good boy and gave him a sticker for being polite. You were picked for being the only teacher he hadn't called a cunt and the only one who didn't think he was one.

When he showed up at four thirty, having already served a detention for a different matter, he was expecting you to deliver the news of him being expelled. You shut the door behind him and watched as he slipped dejectedly into a seat at the front.

"Go on then, get it over with. I'm guessing they sent me to you cos Blake's out and you're the only teacher here with any real bollocks – apart from Ms Draper that is." You snorted at this and then covered it with a cough. "They're such fucking cowards. Just expel me and get it over and done with."

"I'm not going to expel you."

His face changed. "You're not?!"

"No. I'm here to be good cop."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm meant to tell you not to throw your future away on petty playground fights and leave the aggression to those goddamn computer console things."

He grinned at you. "X-Box Mr Brady, it's an X-Box."

"Whatever. All of that. Okay? Come to school, get your C grades, fuck off and do whatever you want to stay out of trouble."

"You're so caring, sir."

"I do care."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You know I do. I care about all my students." You lied. You hated most of them.

"Including me."

"Especially you."

_Fuck._

He blinked. "I'll get my C in maths, but I ain't bothered about the rest. But I want to do well cos I wanna make you proud."

Fuck - you were so proud of him you wanted to scream. You nodded distantly and watched as he got up to wander up to where some of his work was displayed on the wall, in the corner. You pursued.

Steven was babbling as he looked at the display board, he wasn't even aware you were up so close that you could smell those pale hairs on the nape of his neck. You breathed him in, cigarettes and Lynx and listened to that harsh Manchester accent as it stuttered and stopped when your lips finally caressed his neck. He didn't move as you hovered there and it was as if he hadn't noticed, so this time when you kissed again, you lingered to taste him. He pulsed under your lips.

You kissed closer to his jaw, aware your breathing sounded ragged and desperate. Your hands slid across his waist, finding the bare skin under his shirt. His head arched back against yours, his mouth opening in yearning as he gave you moral compass so half-heartedly. "Don't," he said, "If someone walks in…"

It was a murmur moaned against your cheek. You pawed at his solid groin, the crotch of his trousers satisfyingly hot. He swore, voice disappearing as he turned his head to make his mouth meet your cheek, and unzipped his trousers.

You didn't take a moment because you were pushing your hands inside.

You groaned into his ear. He was harder, warmer, thicker than you'd imagined. "I want you, Steven," you said, like a dark threat. You didn't just want him. You were going to have him.

You pushed him against the wall, body to body, and sunk your teeth to his collar bone. He unknotted his tie so you had full access to lick the curve of his throat and watch him writhe. You were still groping his cock, so you wormed a hand free and stroked his arse with deliberate intent and then pressed yourself against him so he felt your cock urging through.

He turned to face you and when you saw his dishevelled uniform and the lust of a teenager in his eyes, it startled you, and you stepped back jolting the desk behind. He approached you, fingers reaching out to your checked shirt, and chewing his lip. You wondered if he'd learnt this in Teacher Seduction 101.

"No." You looked away from him. "Get out."

"But! Mr Brady – Brendan?" He was making it worse on the two of you. His blue eyes were rimmed with disappointment. His mood changed as you disappeared into the adjoined office stacked with books and your laptop. He stood in the doorway, holding onto his unfastened trousers at the hips. "You're making an idiot outta me! What's this all about?!" He gestured between you, your blatant desires.

"It's about you being a queer little cock tease," you said, snarling up into his face.

He pulled the door shut behind him, closing you in and squared up to you, scoffing. "You were just about to fuck me up the arse so what does that make you, eh?"

You stared at him for an age until he was on you, kissing the life from you, divesting himself of clothes. You wanted to take the power back and began to by kissing him hard, up against the door. He buzzed with the ferocity of his eagerness, mouth soft and hungry. He kissed sloppily, but you liked that, it lead you to believe there hadn't been many before you. You hoped you were his first taste of a man.

His boldness surprised you, even if it shouldn't have. He stuck his hand down the front of your trousers and you watched him gulp – even if subconsciously – at the size of you. You hoped he didn't want to waste any time with too much foreplay - as far as you were concerned, the last few weeks had been enough build to this climax – even though the look in his eyes made you want to treat him well. Before you could ask him and break that final taboo of hundreds you were breaking, he made you groan by kneeling in front of you.

"I ain't a cock tease, alright?" He looked almost hurt by your earlier dig and you were possessed by an urge to reach out and touch his slightly gel-spiked hair. So you did.

All of this felt so wrong.

For a novice he sucked cock well. You thought about telling him you'd give him a B+ for fellatio but knowing Steven he'd think it was an algebraic term and that he'd finally scraped higher than a D. And you rationalised that with comments as teachery as that – you deserved to rot in hell.

You tilted his chin up and wiped saliva from his lip, telling him to go slower and easing in a little deeper until his eyes blinked tears. The fact he stroked your balls without you uttering a word kicked your orgasm into life and you clawed at the back of his hair hoping he'd swallow. When he did, you leant back against the door to watch him recover.

You were both laughing as he stood to kiss you on the mouth. You were glad when he didn't seek your approval and fill you with more guilt. He unbuttoned your shirt.

"Everyone knows you're gay. If this gets out, what do you stand to lose?"

Steven paused. "No one's gonna find out." He smiled seeing your tattoos, like he hadn't bargained for you having a life outside of school, and ran his hands over your body. "Me stepdad doesn't have a clue I'm gay, nor me mam. I'd be dead."

"Okay," you said and then shook off that feeling that you were meant to ask more and worry for his safety. You were about to take his virginity, the words 'child protection' make you recoil a little. "Everything okay at home?" You asked quickly and then blinked away from him.

Steven tutted. "I thought you were meant to be shagging me not sending me to the school counsellor."

"Point. About that…" Your eyes wandered to his body, thumbs pinching into his underwear and pulling them down. You held his dick in your hand, watching his eyes gloss over as your fingers played lightly over his balls. "Nice," you said, a teasing tone with a serious face.

"Is it gonna hurt?" Steven's bravado shrunk away and it panicked you a little to see him like this. But that core of vulnerability had pulled you in from day one.

"I'll go slow," you said. You groaned into his mouth as your cocks touched, eager to claim him.

After you kissed him you retrieved the condom and lube sachet from your wallet. You hadn't put it in there for him, you were arrogant enough to, you just hoped you wouldn't give in so easily. This cupboard style office had a lock on it and you weren't stupid enough to risk it and then your mouth twitched with a lustful smile.

"Over the desk," you said, watching him ease into position, arms outstretched on the table top.

His skin was so smooth like he hadn't fallen into scrapes at all. You ran your hands down his spine, like a hot marble statue and heard him murmur when you pushed the digit of your forefinger into the crease of his buttocks.

"Trust me," you said, repeating the action with your tongue. He squirmed a little and you'd have taken a moment to laugh if you hadn't been so impatient. You separated his cheeks and licked his opening apart for the first time, hearing him bang on the desk with his fist as you pushed against his resistance and let your touch make the first fuck.

It wasn't enough for you and you drowned a finger in spit and pushed it right in. You'd half fulfilled your promise – this was slow for you – but he cried a little, so you shushed him and curled your finger. At first he made bubbling sounds of startled confusion and then your rhythm harshened and he swore like morsecode when you fingered his prostate.

You kissed his shoulders. "Y'gonna have to be quiet for me." You held your latexed cock, hard in your hand and plied his accommodating hole with lubricant. He felt hot and greased and his ring was already a satisfying dark pink where you'd toyed him. He tensed when you first entered and you stroked the flank of his body with affection until he eased up a little, getting used to your size, before you took a greedy push inside him. His yell was muffled by his mouth over his arm, but you took his hips into your possession and found a rocking pleasure which turned his discomfort into ascending mews.

Soon he was using the desk as a lever, fucking himself backwards and you were forced to slow him right down to drive deep into him. You felt around for his cock, its pre-cum oiling your grip. You knew, being a teenager he wouldn't last long, but you intended to drain every last inch of your satisfaction into him.

When he came his arm blocked out his noisy cries and you felt the hot rush of liquid over your hand. His sphincter constricted in orgasm and you convulsed against him, wrenching his hips forward and back to plunder him until you were spent.

After you were done, your body still reeling, you located a box of tissues in the desk drawer and wrapped it around the condom and slid the box to him. He wiped up, a little tender and then sat up on the desk, reclining and propped up on his elbows.

His eyes danced mischievously. "Do I have to beg?"

"What d'ya want?" You asked, already redressing.

"Well I would have asked for a dirty weekend away but I'm too young to drive and I think you'd get done for kidnap."

"I'd get done for worse," you said, cringing.

He kissed you. "That was fucking –" he turned you on with his breathlessness, "- too good to talk about." You kissed again, longer, hungrier. "I wan' a blow job," he said.

"Here? Now?"

"Yeah." He grinned. "I been thinking about it."

"Okay. Good." You said, lowering your mouth to be his first.

::: :::

You gave him a Pay As You Go phone, a brick-like Tesco one. Everyone thought he was a drug dealer anyway so two phones would hardly be a surprise. It was easy that first week when he was expelled. You made him catch a bus out of town and picked him up from there. He looked older out of uniform, or at least you told yourself that to ease your conscience. You fucked him in your car down unearthed routes. You didn't take him home and he didn't ask. You worried a little how things might be when he was back in school but your sex hungry arrangement gave you no time for anxiety. It seemed callous to say so, but you were glad his ma didn't give a fuck about his whereabouts because you could screw him until dark, in every position and no questions were asked.

It was all lust and fluid and sex, but you knew if he asked you to help him escape from his hellish living arrangement, then you would whatever the cost.

"Bren," he said, pressed against your chest. You wanted more than just the backseat with him. Persistent fucker had infected your life. "I'll wait til my last exam, only cos of you, but I wanna leave. Get out of this place."

You stilled the stroking of his thighs.

"I want you to come with me." He looked up, at you, pupils flooding his eyes wide.

You could see it in the news now. You could feel the prison sentence, the words: sex offender knelling in your head. The risk came the moment you laid eyes on him.

"We'd have to make a completely new start. New country. Everything."

"I know."

"If we got caught…you're sixteen, I'm your teacher…"

"I know all that."

::: :::

You'd held out a little longer, until the end of term, so as not to raise the alarm when you failed to turn up to the school. It was an agonising month, mostly spent apart. You had enough money to get started and you were sure you could learn how to run a bar. You already had a barman in mind.

He stood at the airport scrutinising his fake passport. "I'm not meanna be your son, am I?" He grimaced.

"You're my brother until we get over the border and then you can be whatever you want." You had just three bags between you and two non-refundable single tickets. You exchanged smiles.

"Lover?" Steven grinned and you batted him on the back of his legs with your bags. He'd left a note by his mam's fags saying: _Mum, I'm gay. I'm in love and I'm happy. Don't bother coming to find me. Have a nice life. Ste._ He'd left her and Terry five-hundred of his drug money (after eventually admitting to you the rumours were true and he'd dealt for a few years in his early teens) and that would be enough to keep them happy until they forgot about him.

As for you, you spent the next twenty years scanning papers for any mention of your crime, for any police that might come looking for you. And only once did you see it alluded to in print, in a certain Michaela McQueen's breakout novel, where the protagonist's gay best friend was shagging the hairy maths teacher. You were only sorry she hadn't written about you more favourably.

And Steven Hay. You'd been warned about boys like him, ending your teaching career. And he had. But for all the right reasons.


	2. Infected

_A/N: Thank you so much for the warm reception for the first part in the series! The feedback is a joy to read. This next one might be an acquired taste as it deals with an end of the world, supernatural situation. Ste and Brendan are survivors in a world where an infection has turned the population into zombies (think 28 Days Later esque). It's an unusual premise and maybe not for everyone but I hope if you do read you'll enjoy it and if not then the next one will have no zombies in it ;)_

_Warnings: a bit of gore due to the end of the world situation, it's a little grim and bleak. _

* * *

**Infected**

* * *

"Are they gone?" Ste looked like a boy, knees hugged to his chest and pupils leaked wide. He wasn't sure why he referred to them as _'they'_. It wasn't a 'they' any more.

Brendan sat in the knackered armchair opposite, its leather worn into scruffy patches. It was the best piece of furniture left in the building. He watched Ste in the darkness, shied away from the only circle of natural moonlight. He slid the shotgun under the chair.

"Gone," Brendan said, "For now." He looked on Ste swallow and nod. It was the best they had to hope for: safety in the present. "C'mere. At least let me hold you."

Ste crawled low; across their blood and semen stained mattress, over the exposed floorboards, wrapped his arms around Brendan's neck. They'd stopped talking about tomorrow, about despair, death and desolation. There was no need to mention it; it surrounded them. It choked them in the night when the dreams turned out to be kinder than reality.

Brendan kissed the top of his head, Ste's knees digging into his thighs. He'd become even bonier than when they'd first met. When they had sex now, Brendan could count every rib with his tongue. His cheekbones looked sharp in the dark and Brendan rolled his head to the side to suck on his neck. They connected groin to groin, Brendan's hands sliding up the back of Ste's faded t-shirt and then fingers down into the groove of where his jeans bagged too loose for him now.

Against the world's end, sex made them closer to humanity.

Ste spiked his cheek against Brendan's two day's worth of stubble, the slight burn of it reminded him that he was still real. He pulled himself up, elbows resting on the head of the chair and let Brendan tug down his clothes just enough, legs contorted over the arms of the chair. There wasn't a smile between them and with adrenaline of a kill still thumping around Brendan's body, his cock throbbed hard as he uncovered it.

He held his palm open under Ste's lips. "Spit." And worked the saliva onto his cock, before adding his own to lubricate Ste's hole. Life had become a survival, and sex: a carnal need of pleasure and controlled pain. Flowers had died out. And time, the biggest romance of all, was against them.

Ste squeezed Brendan's face tight to his chest as his walls tightened against the pressure of Brendan's cock. Brendan grunted, lips around Ste's nipple to stop himself getting any louder, and took great fleshy handfuls of Ste's arse to ram in further. He whined a little with the pain, but wound a toxic rhythm with his hips through it until his body could fit Brendan with only the sweetest discomfort. His fingers scratched white up the nape of his neck and into his scalp.

Sometimes it would descend into something so rough and greedy that they'd check each other's pupils just to make sure. But they still had blue in there. Their pupils weren't bloodshot with a ghostly silver. They exchanged _I love you's_ and came like humans.

They licked each other clean for scraps of protein and sanitation. Clean water almost felt like a myth once told by a croaky granny and any bottled stuff they found was to drink and never to wash. Ste got over his taboos that it was dirty and got accustomed to everything smelling like their entwined bodies.

Under the army surplus blankets, ones they'd been loaned back when the military were entrusted with the hope of the country, Ste rolled naked into Brendan's embrace. It was rare to be naked. The cold and the fear of what might come knocking at any moment usually kept them clothed.

"At least the pressure's off, Steven." Brendan's jokes were the only thing that got him through the night. "We're not expected to repopulate the planet."

"You think we could keep trying just to make sure?" Ste asked. "Imagine though, my ears and your moustache. Beautiful babies." He stroked Brendan's facial hair. He'd found a razor on Day 26 and insisted on chiselling the tash out from under the beard growth. Ste had just got used to being fucked by Gandalf – as he put it.

They fell quiet, both keeping afloat the delusion that Declan, Paddy, Leah and Lucas were still out there among the living.

They weren't.

::: :::

The boarded up pub, derelict long before the virus hit, sat along a lonesome stretch on a motorway some fifty miles from Hollyoaks village - where they'd first escaped. The kids had been their first priority, but along with the rest of the country it became impossible to travel anywhere that wasn't by foot. The big cities were quarantined – Manchester and Dublin were no go areas. Brendan had decided on the pub after one of the 'hunts' had lead him to stumble upon it. The group they'd been fighting with and helping to travel soon dissipated through weakness or worse and Brendan took Ste away from them in the quietest hour of the night.

"We can't just leave them!" Ste had cried when they got to the pub for the first time.

"They're not our friends, Steven. One of 'em will catch it and you think they'll look twice before they bite you. I ain't losing you. Not to them, not to that. Not to anything. When the food supply runs out, when people start looking at each other funny, when the men start picking each other off to be king – you wanna be in the mix of that?" Brendan was crouched on the floor with him, holding his face in his hands. "I don't wanna have to kill any more people before they turn into those _things_. You hear me? Not people you've befriended."

Ste shook with the sob of a child, wiping fists over his eyes. "Just you and me now?"

Brendan toppled forward and kissed his wet mouth. "Like it's always been."

Ste took comfort in him, his protection. "We can get through anything together, me and you,"

Brendan gripped onto him, wishing Ste had worn warmer clothes on that fateful day when they'd had to leave everything and everyone behind. "We're fighters, Steven. Survivors."

The pub was blessed with metal casing across the window. It hadn't been a protection against _them_ – it had been to keep out vandals, but it suited Ste and Brendan. They were also graced with a cellar stocked with a small quantity of tinned food and old Panda Pops drinks in blue and neon pink. That had been the high point of a very low week.

"I used to love these as a kid!" Ste said, his throat burning a little from the fizz. He'd got Brendan's permission to open the miniature bottle; he made the decisions about what happened when – they fell into that pattern naturally. They had one each and Brendan said Sláinte like old times.

Brendan coughed. "How could you like this crap? Tastes like cough syrup." The bottles were five years past their best but the additives would mean they could survive the apocalypse.

"Love em." Ste barely paused for breath and when the bottle was gone he sighed and stuck out a blue tongue.

"Is that an invitation?" Brendan said and they ended up sucking each other's tongues purple in the basement. As Brendan's hands crept over Ste's body and pushed up his hoodie and t-shirt, they didn't think about the blood that splattered it. The blood of a fifteen year old girl with a twitch in her neck and skin starting to split. The twitch was the first sign. They'd been told that in the government distributed pamphlet on Day 7. Seven days too late. Everyone looked like they had a twitch, when you _really_ looked.

When the sugar crashed out of his system, Ste cried again, fighting Brendan off mid-kiss. He hadn't slept properly in days since he drove a bat through Holly Cunningham's skull. He felt guilt at every smile, at every moment of satisfaction under Brendan's hand.

"People are out there dying! And the others they're-" He ran out of words, his hands flailing. "And we're in here-"

Brendan snapped at him now. Ste had the blood of Holly on him, but Brendan had been _hunting _and its blood massacre had begun rotting him, more than what those creatures could do. "You wanna go out there and share this crap with strangers, Steven, then go ahead. Fuck off. You know what will happen? Eventually some prick bigger than you will feed you to those monsters. Kindness is weakness out there." He took hold of Ste's shoulders. "We hide it out, defend ourselves here, like we talked about, yeah? Then when things get back to normal or the cities open their borders, we grab the kids and then we get ourselves somewhere safer. Right? No good deeds. This is the time to be selfish." He lifted his cheeks up and grinned with a growling wickedness. "You know I like it when you get selfish, Steven." He smoothed down his hair with the tip of his fingers. "Whatever the future, whatever time we have left, let's enjoy each other. Hmm?"

That night, Ste "sorted" dinner – sliced open a tin of beans and a tin of fruit cocktail with a knife. He took it upstairs, shivering as floorboards creaked under his feet.

His face glowed in the dim flicker of a candle Brendan had lit in the centre of an old pool table, covered in a dust sheet. He grinned, the fear dissolving at he stepped closer to the expectant Brendan. "Dead romantic," he said, meaning it more than he'd admit. They dived two forks into the one tin of beans and longed for toast. They didn't dare talk about the food they might never eat again.

Together on a squatter's mattress that first night in the pub, tasting of syrupy peaches and pineapple, they kept each other warm. And it was the first of many times the nightmares haunted Brendan.

In the dream there was no running, no fear. He felt hot, like his skin burnt from the inside out, and bloodshed coloured the walls around him. He strode across Hollyoaks village, wrenching his gaze from side to side, but he wasn't on a hunt. In the dream he didn't question his being there or what had happened to the world. In less time than it took to sprint there, he was in the cellar of the club. It didn't reek of death like reality, like it had when they ran from there. Steven stood there, back to him, lithe and smelling like lust. He wore the tight black uniform he hadn't worn in years and Brendan could see the crease of his arse through them. He stalked him with the intention of fucking him. In the dream he pursued him to the wall like he had done all those years ago and sniffed him out. Fear reflected in Steven's dark eyes but Brendan flooded with adrenaline when he realised this wasn't the same first-time uncertainty and caution in his expression, he knew exactly why he was there and he couldn't stop himself. He choked him until colour bled out of him, but just before the sweet relief of death, exchanged a bloody kiss and watched the infection take hold. Steven twitched, pupils dying black.

Brendan awoke, gasping for breath and turning Ste over in his sleep. He checked him over for all the signs; checked his own skin. They were clean – infection free. Ste murmured in his sleep and Brendan pulled him back against his chest and stayed clamped awake the whole night listening to the world die outside the pub.

::: :::

The first few days in the pub blurred into one. Time only passed by Brendan scoring lines in the chintzy wallpaper. It had been six weeks since the virus started spreading, five weeks since the government had set up a helpline and recruited volunteers for the police and army. Four weeks since most of the population had begun feasting on each other's flesh. Death stopped becoming the slow snail of old age and started outnumbering the living.

They rationed food, looked for tools like knives and glass and matches in the rubble of the pub. They counted bullets. Brendan kept two in his pocket without a word to Ste.

One each.

On the fourth night Brendan heard scratching at the back of the pub. "It'll be a fox," Brendan said, pushing a finger against Ste's lips.

"If it's just a fox, why're you whispering?" Ste's mouth trembled with fear. "Don't go and look. Don't. Please"

Pressing his palms against the side of Ste's face, Brendan spoke firmly. "I need some air. I'm going stir crazy in here. And I wanna kill the fucker. I need to keep you safe." He kissed Ste so hard, Ste's teeth made raw his lip. "And if it's a fox or a rabbit or a grizzly bear then we got dinner."

He picked up the shotgun and unbolted the door before Ste could even claw him back.

He paced, biting what was left of his finger nails and routed around under the bar again where he'd been discovering things like a few worn Jackie Collins novels and The DaVinci Code, board games with missing pieces and a pack of cards. They'd played Connect 4 for hours the previous day until Brendan said he just wanted to sleep and he dozed in the armchair, leaving Ste to lay on the mattress with his eyes shut and imagining life if the world hadn't ended. It kept Ste busy to hold his own form of hunt; Brendan wouldn't let him out the four walls.

When Brendan returned half an hour later, Ste was sat behind the bar counter tiling the floor with old beer mats. He jumped up, brushing himself down and kept his distance whilst scanning Brendan's eyes and skin.

"I'm clean. I'm clean." Brendan's eyes widened in front of Ste, pupils perfect, and he wiped his bloody forearm across his hot head.

"Are you hurt? Are you okay?" Ste took him by the shoulders.

Brendan nodded. "Fine. Just the one. He was weak, I just finished the job." He sniffed as if to regain composure. "On the bright side, I got us Peter Rabbit for dinner."

His hunger stopped him from grimacing. "You better light the fireplace."

::: :::

Brendan taught Ste the entire repertoire of card games he knew, but Ste insisted on many rounds of Go Fish and Brendan grew tired easily. He longed for chess and fine malt. They'd have to move on in a matter of days: supplies were low. Out there he didn't fancy their chances but starving to death wasn't a fight for survival, it was prolonged and miserable.

One night, Ste put down the Jackie Collins and sat up in bed crossed legged and facing Brendan in the chair.

"Read to me." He said, watching Brendan's gaze flicker up in surprise.

He lifted the book in his hand: The Bible. "This?"

"I wanna know what it's all about."

Brendan tensed and then smiled. "You don't want this in your head, Steven. I've got enough of it in me."

Ste accepted it with a brief nod. "Well will you come over 'ere and tell me stories from your head then. Tell me memories – good ones."

Brendan perched the Bible on the seat and climbed into bed beside Ste, sitting at right angles and having Ste lay, legs looped over his. "I ain't got many good ones, not from way back anyway."

Ste took his dry hand and placed it against his cheek. His fingers were scarred and marked with other people's blood. They stroked rough lines on his cheekbones and through the bristling sides of his hair. He was too young to die.

"December." Brendan said after a moment. "The typa cold that seeps right through your clothes but I was warm through. You got the Christmas lights all around –"

Ste grinned tasting brandy pudding on his tongue. "You love all the Christmas lights."

"I do. I do. But I loved them more that year. It felt like a good Christmas the start of a better year. Gut fulla Guinness before midday."

Ste pulled a face. "Yuech."

"Dublin in December…"

"Oh." A smile spread Ste's mouth wide.

Brendan smirked, combing Ste's hair so it stuck up at shaggy angles. "I'd woken up with this bloke next to me. I went and got us breakfast but it only got cold."

"Worth it though." Ste turned his head then, accusatory. "Actually I think you'll find you pigged all the toast before anything happened."

"You definitely got fed."

Ste shook his head with a blush. "Weren't breakfast."

"My kind of breakfast."

Slapping his thigh lightly, Ste ordered Brendan to continue, shutting his eyes to paint technicolour images with Brendan's words.

"Saved the pretty boy from getting crushed by a tram and he repays me by tryina shove me off a pier."

"I was only messing." Ste clamped his eyes shut again. "If I imagine it really hard I can hear the waves you know. Promise me when this is all over we'll go back there." Steven's hope crushed the space inside his chest. What would be left of Dublin, his home, their whirlwind reunion?

Brendan looked up at the ceiling, blinking to clear his head of memories. "Course we will."

Ste laid deadly quiet, feeling the pulse of Brendan's fingers through his cheek. "Even if you don't believe it, just swear we'll go."

"I swear it."

Ste inched his hips off the bed and wriggled off his jeans. They bagged around his rattling bones and slipped off with ease. Brendan spread his palms across his disappearing belly and ached to feed him up, just to see that soft little mound of flesh again.

"Where'd you get the energy from?" Brendan said, pinching his thigh and rubbing his index finger along the underside of Ste's cock. It jerked with life when Brendan squeezed it with a tight o of his fingers.

Ste shrugged and spread his arms out like an angel's wingspan, moaning like one of _them_ on the outside; Brendan had three fingers cupping his balls. He picked himself up, grabbing Ste by the wad of material of his hoodie and pulled him up too, kissing him softly on the lips. There was a slight sting as Ste's sweat-saltiness aggravated the dry cuts inside Brendan's mouth. What he'd give for a bottle of water. He blocked out the niggling twinge and threw Ste forward onto his palms with a soft bounce on the mattress.

He pressed tongue and teeth against Ste's searing hot opening and settled his frustrated writhing with two heavy hands on his hips. If they were in the mood to keep reminiscing Ste would recall Brendan's fingers ploughing deep inside fresh after a shower in the Dublin hotel. Here and now with the light of a few wax-dripping candles, Brendan had him slicked inside out with saliva and loaded tight with two fingers. From behind, Brendan unbuckled and staggered the thickness of his cock against Ste. He reached in front, palming Ste's dick until, with his half cry, cum greased Brendan's fingers. With it, Brendan worked it over the head of his cock and shushed Ste, telling him to wait.

Ste winced for a moment, fingernails scratching the pleats of the mattress and felt the rough of Brendan's tired clothes gyrate, with his hips, against him. It was Brendan's gruff groans that tugged at his senses – he was the only man ever to make him feel so masculine. There was no cooing over him like a doll, there was sweat and mess and heartbeats. Brendan fucked him like they were immortal.

::: :::

Counting again, there was enough food – if they stretched it thin – to starve them over two more days in the pub. But Brendan had better ideas, one that he didn't want Ste a part of.

"I'm not a child, Brendan. Don't treat me like one."

"Well, you're acting like one."

Tiredness didn't begin to broach the levels they were feeling. The walls choked and the stench of death cloyed in the air outside like a smog. The world might be dying without them, but they sure as hell weren't living.

"Fine! Fine!" Brendan's voice flared with anger and he threw Ste the splattered baseball bat and talked through the plan.

Dawn blistered low around seven and they were safer in sunlight. Not because the creatures were nocturnal or afraid of it like some sort of fairytale, they were just slower in it, bemused almost. There'd be no chances, no hangers on. A blow to the head, bullets if desperate and keep on moving. They lived with no sadness, no guilt, no regret.

Brendan kissed him hard on the lips before unbolting the door.

"I love you." He felt for the bullets in his jacket pocket. He closed his eyes for one moment. "Steven if…"

Ste shook his head. "Don't even ask. I won't. I can't."

"I won't ask." Brendan gripped his face. "I'm telling you."

"And you'd do the same, would ya? If it was me – _infected _ – you'd kill me would you?"

He smiled, a little, under the stubble growth; the loaded gun weighed heavy in his hand. He imagined it against his temple. "I'm not going to let that happen."

"That's not what I asked."

They'd walked the stretch of the motorway for two hours solid, passing burnt out petrol stations and bloodied Services. Stocks had been raided long before they'd got there and corpses and abandoned cars wallpapered the tarmac. Stepping over bodies started to become too normal. Heading towards a city seemed futile and in the end they followed a slip road and headed for a small village. They passed a church covered in crucifix graffiti and boards outside carried hastily painted warnings of the end of times, excerpts from the Bible Brendan recognised all too well.

"I don't want to hang around," Ste said, holding onto Brendan's arm.

Brendan read posters on the church noticeboard that begged for healthy volunteers – women especially – and shuddered at the thought of one lone woman circled in by a group of men, insisting this was the only way to ensure a future.

"Let's get out of here."

The village funnelled into a larger town one where dogs roamed free and Ste could barely stomach the sights, the after-gore. Blood and flesh turned brown and grey and the smell twisted acidity straight through to their stomachs.

"They're better off," Brendan told him, weaving a route between the dead, arm around his shoulders, letting him walk with his view protected and pressed against Brendan's chest. "Better they don't see what's become of the world."

They started house by house, looking for things to steal, hoping they weren't the last to forage. There was an unimaginable joy at finding a tube of toothpaste and toilet roll in one house. The elderly woman who'd lived there had passed before the infection had even made the headlines on the newspaper she clutched. She'd been saved that horror.

Her rotting fridge smelt out the whole downstairs, but Ste chuckled as he sprayed himself with perfumed Dove deodorant upstairs in her bedroom. But guilt panged his head as he looked at a photo on her dresser of her with her grandchildren. His thoughts jumped immediately to the blonde of his children, their smiles wider than sun beams. Brendan appeared a moment later, shaking him from his thoughts. He held up two canvas bags just short of a _Ta-dah!_

"Bags For Life!" he said with a grin, "Good old Mrs Bird". Her name lay printed on the medication that lined her kitchen counter like a pharmacy. They needed something to cart the supplies back to the pub with them and she'd take good care of the bags.

"Can't we just stay here?" Ste pouted, sitting on the edge of the floral bedspread.

"She's got nothing in her cupboards. And the smell, Steven…"

Ste threw him the can of deodorant. Brendan sprayed and sniffed, screwing up his face. "Hm. Feminine." He sat beside him. "We agreed we'd go back to the pub. If we stay here, they'll find us. They're dormant right now, but I'm guessing these houses are crawling."

Pain gnawed at his belly. "I'm so hungry."

"I know you are," Brendan said, kissing him, gritting back that empty ache inside. "Let's just try this street and we'll eat whatever tins we find, then we'll head back I promise."

::: :::

Ste ate Alphabetti Spaghetti with his fingers, knocking back the sauce like it was nectar. The old dear's next door neighbour had a shed full of cash and carry goods. Enough soup cans and Ready Salted multipacks to last weeks, as well as various tinned Heinz knock offs. Brendan pinched squares of tinned ravioli between his fingers and devoured the lot.

They shared greedy grins and tomato flavoured kisses before loading the bags and downing cans of Sprite in almost one gulp. Things were looking up.

Before they left the house, Ste suggested trying the shower, just to see if there was any water left in the pipes. It would freeze, but to be cleaner seemed like the ultimate goal. Brendan let him head up first and the stairs gave an eerie creak in the dimly lit corridor. Ste's heart thumped when he pushed open the bathroom door, it nudged open with a whine, the brackets clicking with rust. He heard a vicious buzzing of flies in the bathtub, like a fluctuating UV strip-light and fresh sweat sprung at the thought of pulling back the curtain on the bath.

The shower door clunked as he opened it and he winced at the noise, leaning forward to turn on the water. Pipes groaned and chalked water spat from the shower head before a trickling stream began. Ste stripped and called for Brendan as he dived under the freezing water. He swilled it around his stale mouth and spat it back into the water flow.

As Brendan opened the door, about to undress and share the water, the curtain surrounding the bath was pulled free. It all happened within seconds. One of the infected leapt from the bath and threw himself at the glass of the shower. It had once been a he, a young one at that, but his blue-ish flesh split at the cheeks and veins looked scaly around the silver-shot eyes. In the time it took for Ste to scream, Brendan launched a bullet into its brain and gore covered the bathroom like a thrown bucket of paint. He oozed and fizzed on the linoleum floor, Brendan's gun still smoking in his palm.

Ste sobbed with shock into the corner of the shower cubicle throwing his arms around Brendan and clinging, shivering into his chest where his clothes grew damp with water. "It's okay. It's okay."

::: :::

Steven didn't react in the way Brendan expected after the events in the house. On the journey home he paced quietly, but not in the soft vulnerable way that made Brendan cower in love for him, but hardened, numb. He had no idea that Ste's mind raced over plans for survival like the fright made him acknowledge the world would never be reset to life before Day Zero. Even if normality changed, if society reformed, scars of these days past would split history into those who survived and those who'd feasted in the shadow of a stronger man.

He wanted to go back to that street and loot to the ground, shoot the fuckers into oblivion if he needed to. He couldn't live in fear. And with enough supplies, he knew they should make plans to regroup with others. Brendan was enough, he was everything, but sometime society would need them and they'd need society. It didn't bode well for the future to alienate themselves.

When they arrived back at the pub, Brendan had other ideas and ones he wouldn't share. They laid out their pilfered goodies like they were setting up camp and rubbed toothpaste around their mouths with grubby fingertips, grinning at each other. It would have been too easy to gorge until they were sick, but they'd learnt patience and rationing the hard way. Food and drink weren't a Tesco away, they'd eat what they had like sparrows, expecting to find nothing in their next forage.

Steven tasted soapy clean when Brendan went down on him. He stood propped against the old pool table and wondered how many love affairs it had seen. Coy looks at the jukebox or first dates at the table or flirtation over a game and an afterhours fuck on the felt top. Brendan's hair plied thick under his fingers and he pressed his knee against his shoulder. The energy had shifted; Brendan's tenderness yielded slow and savouring strokes of his mouth. Brendan acted as if they had all the time in the world.

Before time to sleep approached, Ste coerced Brendan into a game of Connect 4. He whined a little like a child, snuffing his nose against the side of Brendan's hair and curling his tongue across the spreading moustache; he was all limbs in Brendan's lap.

If Brendan agreed Ste made promises, like rimming and first dibs on the next day's food stash.

Brendan stopped him with a hand on his chest, shaking his head. "Steven. We're not going back there."

"What d'you mean?"

"Not together. I'm not putting you in that situation again."

"What situation?" Ste made air quotes, voice pitchy in indignation. "Nothing happened, you shot him."

"And if I hadn't?"

"So what do you want us to do? Sit in 'ere and starve?" Ste was standing now and feeling defensive, Brendan took to his feet.

"No. You'll stay here and I'll go."

Ste scoffed. "No! How is that any better?"

"Because I'll know you're safe."

"By keeping me locked up like some prisoner?!"

"What would you have me do Steven?!"

Ste's fingernails dug into his skull and he paced the floorboards, creating a chasm between them. "I'm suffocating in here! You keep me bolted in, like – like – some caged animal. Like a pet!"

Brendan snarled. The lack of everything drained every sense. "Don't you say that, don't you dare! I've done everything for you to keep you safe. To look after us both."

"We can't keep this up!" Ste said. "Don't you see?! Who knows what's happening out there with other survivors while we're shut away in here. It's not natural. We're shutting ourselves off."

Brendan's voice twisted in anger. "Be my guest Steven. You know where the door is. Walk out there and you be their little experiment, you volunteer and be the big man and watch as they feed you to the dead."

"Don't talk like that!"

"Can you heal the sick? Or make weapons or give birth? That's the only things that'll be any use to the survivors out there. You might as well be bait."

It was only then Brendan realised Ste was raged red with tears and he pushed him away when he attempted to hold him. He shoved and fitted until Brendan could coax him into grip. Then a banging on the boarded windows and doors shook them like the earth's plates were moving. By the sound of them, a crescendo of deathly groans, there was more than one.

Brendan pressed his hand over Ste's mouth and he wheezed through it, eyes streaming and shaking his head, pleading _no no no._ When Brendan freed him, scrabbling for his gun and bullets, Ste blocked his path, clinging to his clothing like a barricade.

"They'll leave. Don't go out there. Please."

His eyes closed. "I have'ta. I have'ta." It was another time, another place where those words didn't mean throwing yourself into the path of death.

"They can smell us. One way or another they'll get in." Brendan prised Ste's hands from him.

Ste ran for another weapon, eyes wide and hysterical now. "Well I'm coming with you then."

"No."

"You can't leave me locked up in here! I can't breathe!" Ste's throat scratched dry as he screamed and he stumbled as Brendan pushed him away and wrenched open the door, gunning down the darkness and bolting the door from the outside.

Ste rocked under the pool table, sheltered and knees drawn to his chin. He used to hide under the kitchen table like that from Terry on nights when he'd been to the pub and hoped he'd get to Pauline first, who laid alcohol-unconscious on the sofa. He always felt like the wicked child wishing his mother would take the brunt of it before he did, because her smacks hurt less than Terry's and he could cope with hers in the morning when she screamed at him for not protecting her. The gunshots outside sounded like beatings as the groaning diminished.

When the silence fell, Ste couldn't bare it and busied himself making the bed. The blanket didn't feel so rough anymore.

He heard the door unbolting and his heart beat calmed. Wiping his cheeks with his sleeve he began to apologise to Brendan as he finished with the bed.

"I'm sorry. I should never –" He sniffed again. "I didn't mean ta – I love you, you know?"

He heard Brendan breathing ragged behind him and braced himself for seeing him sheened in blood. "I just wanted to protect you, Steven." Brendan spoke strangely, like his mouth was covered in gauze.

Ste looked up and saw the half-moon of silver in Brendan's pupils. His neck twitched and blueing skin split like seams. Coldness flooded him.

Finally, Ste saw the end of the world.


	3. His Dealer

_Again, I could spend all day expressing how much the comments and reviews mean to me so thank you so so much. _

_Summary:__ This story deals with my most recent AU art – Brendan is fresh from prison and Ste becomes his drug dealer. _

_A/N:__ Once again it's another dark one, ending included. The next instalment of this series will be lighter, I promise and you can expect that in roughly a week's time._

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**His Dealer**

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The autumn breeze whips Brendan's coat up around him – the same coat he'd been wearing eighteen months ago on his arrest – the pockets still plenty big enough for his battered knuckles. He feels the ice of the month sting the fresh battle scar under his eye socket (a near miss) and gives the greying prison estate one last glance.

They say you leave prison a changed man, but for Brendan, he doesn't expect anything much to differ at all, besides his location. The taxi driver avoids eye contact throughout the journey and Liverpool starts to become just a city fading in the wing mirror. The dark days of Danny Houston's reign dwindle on the horizon and he counts his lucky stars that he doesn't have to see the fucker that screwed him over again.

God bless the loyalty of little sisters, he thinks as the taxi drops him off outside the high rise of swanky glass and chrome apartments in the bustle of Manchester. Cheryl paid for it all, from the pocket of some too-wealthy English guy she'd copped off with during Brendan's time inside. She'd protested his innocence every hour of the day, believing his big blue-eyed lies each time. But when the posho whisked her off her feet, the visits started diminishing and she'd flashed the engagement ring in his face, talking of this Nate as if he were her knight in shining armour. She'd squeeze his hand tightly across the visitor's table with that naïve sympathy and say, "You're day'll come, love." She'd let all her friends swoon over him and say with the highest authority, "He's one of the last gentlemen around, my big brother. Confirmed bachelor is our Bren." Of course, it was no secret, except to her, that he left behind him a trail of one night stands and even the most hardened of business associates knew of his "tastes". That's why the set up to get him put away had been so easy: he could never resist a boy's pretty face.

As soon as he lets himself into the apartment, he heads straight for the bedroom where Cheryl kept up her promise and loaded his wardrobe full of cash from his off-shore account and the bedside cabinet lined with credit cards, passports (genuine and fake) and two brand new phones filled with contacts he knows he can trust. The deeds for the nightclub sit snuggly next to the fruit bowl and a little note to say she's filled the fridge with all his favourites. Brendan selects the greenest apple as he creates a sandwich, making the phone calls that will ensure the business gets off the ground.

::: :::

It's a fortnight before the big launch and Brendan knocks back a straight whiskey with it barely touching the sides – the burn he's missed all too much in prison – sitting in the red hued darkness of another nightclub, his biggest competition. It's rammed to the walls with students and local town pikeys and he prays to God that he can rope in better quality, bigger spending punters. He surveys the room, clocking a scattering of young guys but they're not worth more than a once over. Knowing what happened the last time he put his faith in a round little arse, he's kept his mind off getting laid and directed all that buzz into the business. So far the legitimate front end, the club, is taking shape – he's hired, fired, bought the right stock, the right design and marketing team – _Reborn_ seemed like an apt name for the joint. As for the drugs side project that raked in the most profit, the big guns were surprised to hear his growly laughter on the phone again and agreed to start small with him now that he was operating alone. They recognised that Houston was getting too old and too personal in his grudges for them to lay as much trust at his door. Brendan they liked, Brendan they respected. And as for dealers, finding them is his forte. He already has a little conglomerate of five, it is just that one more to make him a happy man. The lookout for Mr Six begins and he needed to be something special.

"I don't think I've seen your face before," says a man over his shoulder, extending his hand and making Brendan unhunch and turn on his stool. He shakes his hand warily, it's a slimy grip. He's got long floppy hair slicked back, the neck and shape of someone who doesn't threaten with weight.

"And you'd be?" Brendan says because he'll shake hands but he won't give away his name to someone with eyes as cold.

"Simon Walker," he says. "I happen to own this place." It would unnerve Brendan that Simon's voice tempers with a sing-song quality if he hadn't met a whole set of nutters inside.

"Bully for you." Brendan says, sliding back into his drink.

Simon isn't retreating. "And if rumour serves me right, you're the Mr Brady, owner of Reborn." Simon stands, glancing side to side in the glory of his club. "Coming to check out the competition? Now there's a smart man. Let me get you another," he says noticing the empty glass and clicking his fingers at the bargirl, telling her that all Mr Brady's drinks are on the house.

"I can pay for my own drinks."

"Consider this a goodwill gesture."

Brendan points, a dark smile hidden in his trimmed beard. "Is that fear I spot in your eyes there, Simon? Is it?"

Simon pats his shoulder – and the query of _is he?_ enters and leaves his mind as soon as it's obvious he's not – wishing him a good night and he slips into a cocooned booth with a slender woman, after an altercation with a young lad Brendan doesn't get sight of until he's beside him at the bar.

"Give's a beer," the lad says leaning over the counter top.

The bar girl rolls her eyes and holds out her hand. "You know Walker don't do staff hand-outs."

"Yeah well, he owes me, dun't he?"

Brendan looks up from the whiskey he's nursing and sees the surly pout first. The lad's t-shirt can't be any bigger than a small but it hangs off his frame like a tent when his elbows stick out in triangles on the bar.

"I ain't serving if you ain't got the cash, Ste."

Ste propels himself back from the counter, telling the girl to shove it, but then Brendan grabs him by the wrist – which he notices are bruised with thumb sized smudges – and tells him he'll pay. Despite the boy looking wary, desperation gives in and he nods, letting Brendan cough up the three quid.

As the girl fetches the bottle, Ste glances sideway to look at the man whose bought half an hour of his time. He's ripped and dark and hairy; Ste's insides slick with excitement. "Cheers," Ste says when his lips meet the rim of the bottle and he takes a long hard gulp with his neck thrown back and his throat pulsing.

"What kinda work do you do for the boss?" Brendan asks him and leans in close so he doesn't have to strain to hear over the pulse of the music. The club lights make the back of the boy's neck glitter like a sweet shop.

"This n'that." Ste says. His pockets don't hide the stash as well as he thinks. Brendan could dig his little finger into the back pocket and hook himself a white-powdered hit. "He ain't my boss anymore, I quit."

"He give you those?" Brendan says, fingertips on Ste's wrists.

Ste flinches away at the heat. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing." Brendan says, giving the length of Ste's body a run with his gaze.

"You know of any jobs going or somethin'?" He's a little softer now, a little more hopeful. He didn't see Brendan's intentions written all over his face, but if he had he might've just stared back.

The laughter brews in his throat. "I've got something in mind. Not here though, hmm? I can't imagine that Walker friend of yours would be best pleased to see you talking to me."

"And why would he mind me talking to you?" Ste's head tilts down and his eyes up. With his finger he catches a drip of beer sliding down the bottle neck and licks it up. Brendan notices and he has to tear his eyes away just to reply to the boy.

"Because I'm about to be his biggest competition, Steven."

Ste doesn't correct him on the name and doesn't move away when he's up close, speaking into his ear.

They meet outside, without Simon seeing, where the club trails off into alleyways and terraced housing that's seen better days. Brendan whistles him over when he sees Ste skulking around looking for him and raises two fingers in a beckoning. Ste's about to comment on how seedy the area is, because he knows there's a needle or a hooker or a passed out junkie lurking around here somewhere but before he says that and before his bottom lip quivers in the cold, Brendan crushes him against the wall, tongue in his mouth and a hand against his groin.

Brendan knows from the smell of him, from the way his lips parted too much, from the double glances and the shape of his body that Ste is a sure thing. The boy's keen mouth under him opens with all the hungry ease he craves, inviting in his wicked tongue with helpless whines. He offers a limp hand on Brendan's shoulder and Brendan revels in the slackness of his body as he folds his groping palm over the bulge in the lad's jeans. Ste shrinks a little further against the wall and Brendan is undecided on what his body wants first, so he takes a fistful of the lad's hair - because why pretend he'll be soft with him – gnaws on the swell of his lip and pulls down his zip, in that order.

The boy doesn't know his name or where he's been but the kiss is enough to let him know that saying no isn't something either wants, or could say. Ste's still gasping and dumbfounded, his clothes bunched and his hair messy when Brendan tugs down jeans and underwear to his knees and runs the head of his cock over his lips. He doesn't like it that Ste's unfocused so he clicks his fingers and then uses them to torment the weight of his balls because he reckons knows the types of guys Steven's had and he can bet they don't know he likes it there. Ste's eyes roll back in ecstasy and all he hears is the sound of pleasure humming through Brendan's nose before he encases him tip to root. All Ste can say is _Jesus_ to the stranger sucking him off, and curl and tense with the feeling of his beard friction against his skin.

He's a good size in his mouth, warm and salty and loaded. He feels that non-existent belly of his roll and a whimper escapes from his lips. It takes everything in his conscience not to say _fuck_ and plough into him without a rubber, but he's smarter than that even if times like this makes him wish he wasn't. He comes like a dream eventually, with a little cry that crackles in his throat but Brendan doesn't let him loose just yet because this is better than he remembers. When he pulls himself to his feet, he licks his teeth with his tongue and Ste's taste is everywhere just how he likes it and grins at him, diving in for that kiss again, this time shorter and sweeter.

Ste pulls away and maybe he's not used to the taste. Brendan thinks he'll change that in time.

"I don't even know your name," he says, flushing.

Brendan pulls up Ste's pants and helps his clumsy fingers with the button. "Brendan Brady." He says, not offering his hand, but pulling at his bottom lip again with his teeth. "Let me show you the club."

::: :::

"Wow." Ste says, breathing the word and his mouth staying in that perfect O shape. The aqua coloured lights buzz when Brendan flicks them on behind the bar and he gloats in the first impression his club gives: its sleek monochrome and dark features lit with an array of blues and greens.

He steps up behind Ste and watches their joint reflection come together in the mirror as he presses his mouth to Ste's ear. "So you'll work for me?" It's hardly a question.

"Doing what?"

"Dealing. Bit of bar work when I need it. I'll give you a uniform so you can pretend for your man at home." Brendan's network of tests come into play and if he's not single, he soon will be. No question.

Ste pouts, predictably. "I ain't got anyone at home."

"That's good." Brendan says making a note to get the condoms stocked in the gents as soon as possible. He slips into a burst of greedy laughter and repeats himself. "That's good."

"And what do I get for doing your dirty work?" Ste asks.

"A good cut. Security. I ain't Simon Walker. I won't hurt you, Steven." Tenderness lingers in him and he's lucky this one doesn't have Danny Houston breathing down his neck. He's not bait.

"He won't like it, you know. Walker don't like people nicking his staff."

"I'll deal with him." Brendan sits on one of the leather sofas and spreads his eagle arms across the back. "I only ask for loyalty from my staff, cos I've been fucked over in the past and well - can you give me that?"

Ste nods and hovers awkwardly in front of Brendan. "And just now in the alleyway that was -?" He wrings his hands.

Brendan grins; there's power in it. "You think I do that to all my staff?" He salivates at Ste's naivety. "It was me wanting you and you wanting me." He blinks at Steven with arrogance, relaxing his body. "Tell me I'm wrong."

Ste shakes his head and the corner of his mouth hides the crease of a smile.

"I always get what I want." Brendan says, his voice like a howl in the dark. "And what I want is you." Brendan gives him the once over again, swearing to himself that he would have to drag the lad into better clothes. "You gotta be somewhere tonight?"

"I'm supposed to be on a pick-up for Walker."

Brendan shakes his head. "No," He says. "I've got plans for you tonight."

::: :::

The seven am Marimba phone alarm wakes him and all he can see when he first opens his eyes is the peach of Steven's arse staring back at him. He remembers stirring at four and coaxing Ste onto his front, taking him from behind with sluggish sleepy ease because he was still loose from earlier. The lad suits compliance; he bends and grins lopsidedly with it. He hits snooze on the phone and pushes it under the pillow, propping on his elbow to run his fingers over Steven's exposed cheek, where the bed covers dip across his lower spine. Last night was a joy he's in no hurry to forget.

Steven stirs, groaning in sleep and stretching his bruised wrists above his head. Brendan remembers how Ste coiled them around the bed railings when they had first reached the flat and Brendan had licked the skinniness of him from bone to bone. It's too early in the game to make an enemy of Simon over this, but already the need swells in him to protect Steven.

Brendan gives him a gruff 'good morning' and doesn't stop the pursuit of his fingers leaving Ste pushing his face in the pillow because he's ticklish. The sigh pushes out of him and in a sharp flick of the wrist he yanks the bed covers onto the floor and climbs onto the back of him, working his tongue down his back.

"Don't tell me it's too early, Steven." Brendan amuses his tongue in the well of Ste's arse, pausing mid-flow resting chin on cheek to talk. He's aware of the stream of missed calls on Steven's mobile. "I don't want you working for anyone else, you hear? Favour or not. If you're short for cash I'll loan ya." His hands spread him open but he wants an agreement first, and he waits, blowing cold air into him.

"Uh-huh…okay. Alright." He slurs, not quite hearing Brendan's _Good_ when his finally tongue rides him. Brendan bites the fleshiest parts of him between rims and that's a sign, if any, that business with Brendan means pleasure and pain.

::: :::

He has club business to take care of so he lets Steven use his shower and accepts when he doesn't want to stay for breakfast. He's jumpier and more timid than the fighting spirit suggested in the bar previously and Brendan wonders if he'll be a liability. He'll let it slide; he's young and rough around the edges, a bit sullen and gobby but everything seems like a positive when it's framed by his wide adoring eyes and chalky soft skin. And sure enough he turns up at the club that night like Brendan asked, along with the other chosen dealers and he doles out their tight black bar uniforms that they won't get much use of. That's the perfect cover, of course.

He threatens them a bit, degrades them. He feels the coldness of prison consume him when he bullies, but the familiar fear is a comfort in their expressions. They know the boundaries now and he reminds them of how irreplaceable they are; they are the unwashed and unloved – friendless, orphaned or without families who care, they're students with nothing but a debt to their name. Then he sweetens the mood with a cash bonus, a loyalty wad and a free round of drinks. They're on his side then and it's time then to make it known, to make it clear Mr Six is his number one.

He dismisses them all, telling them he'll call, but keeps Steven behind like the naughty school boy and breathes him in, nose against nape. He runs his fingertips along his goosebumped arms.

"Did I scare ya?" he asks and floods with vitality when Ste spins around on the stool and looks him straight in the eye.

"I don't scare easy." He pulls Brendan into a kiss with the tie he wears. He would usually only wear one for court, feeling like he's attending his own funeral, but today's the exception.

"Come into my office, I've got something for you." He straightens up the shirt and tie and leads him into a blackened room, spacious, mirrored with the spotlights scrolled down to a dull white. He sits in a black leather chair and kicks off his shoes. "The bags," he says to Ste, reaching for a cigarette – the prison habit lingers – and watches Ste discover that he's bought him a whole new wardrobe's worth of clothes.

"I gave up years ago." Ste says, squeezing his nostrils together when Brendan offers him a drag.

"Ain'tcha even gonna say thank you?" Brendan indicates the bags.

"What's wrong with me clothes that I got on?"

"They ain't good enough for ya." Brendan's stubbed his cigarette out now and he tells himself it's not Ste's influence, but it might as well be. "You wouldn't put a prince in rags now, would ya?"

Ste's smug at this, grinning with his head on high. "I'm a prince now?"

"You're mine." Brendan says and he has him trapped with heavy lidded eyes and he's up on his feet, circling him round the table. "And I like my things to look good."

Ste skids off to the side, under from Brendan's clutches. "Bit of a control freak, aren't you?" A spark in his eyes dares Brendan.

"You weren't complaining last night." Brendan hooks his finger under Ste's chin, breath hot on his lips and watches as Ste's gaze falls to his mouth. "And neither was I."

He wonders who's really in control when the flicker of a smile on Ste's face makes him lose all his cool.

"Consider the clothes a gift. If you don't want 'em, I'll take them back."

Ste has the trails of the tie in his fingertips. "You don't have to buy me."

The phone in Ste's pocket rings and breaks the tension. It's Walker and his voicemail begins with a chilling fury, only to descend into begging. Ste deletes it before it reaches the end with Walker telling him he hopes he's dead in some ditch rather than betraying him.

"You'll be safe?"

"He's all cold threats." Ste shrugs. "He knows my address, he'd come after me if he was bothered. He just thinks I'll come crawling back when I need the money."

"And if you don't?" Brendan's brief insecurity comes as a surprise to them both.

"_I won't. _He'll find some other mug to do his deals."

Brendan cups his face and aches at the connection that's blistered between them in such a short space of time. "You're not scared of him?"

Ste shakes his head until Brendan takes his wrists into his hands like he's cradling a bird with a broken wing.

"And me? How do you know I'm not dangerous?"

"I don't." In the beat that follows there's a heady lick of lust between them. "But I still want you anyway."

It's all Steven says before he's ripping the buttons of Brendan's shirt across the room and groping Brendan's tight trousers as rough as will disarm his composure. There's a snarl in the way Brendan pushes Ste against the glass desk and a thrum of laughter when Ste reveals, from his pocket, that he came well prepared for this. Brendan's already warm from the inevitability of Ste's eagerness and he presses his dick against Ste's arse before he's even taken the time to pull down his pants.

Ste's got sweaty palm prints all over the virginal glass desk, but where else better? And he's sure Ste's rubbing his cock against it – because he's learning he's an impatient fucker like that – so he gives him a little spank because he discovered the previous night that he likes it. Ste hums, mouth slops open and he curves back for another.

There's lube in the desk drawer because he brought it in with him that morning and he rubs Ste straight away with its coldness, revelling in the sharp intake of breath and the little _oh_ that squeezes from his gut when he twists his index finger in right to the knuckle. Ste's knees buck when Brendan enters him and he catches him around the middle, keening with every thrust. Brendan sweats with the enjoyment of his shirt and tie and cross pendant dragging across Ste's jogging body. Ste's shivering with the overlapping ascent of every nerve frying and his cries hurl condensation across the desk top. His thighs clench at the solidity of Brendan's prison-gym body fucking away at him and the Morse code of guttural moans he hears.

Brendan's feeling Ste come: the throbbing clench of muscles and the hot semen messy. His eyes clamp shut because he wants a moment longer but there's a figure in the doorway who gawps and flees but not before Brendan screams at the hopeless new barman to fuck off. Ste's mortified but when Brendan's done, he zips up and leaves him, tearing out of the office, grabbing Rhys by the throat.

Rhys is quick to gabble apologies, wincing as Brendan twists his arm behind his back.

"I've a good mind to kill ye! But first I wanna hear why you're in my club!"

Rhys stammers and whines. "I was coming to ask about changing a few shifts but it's not important. I'm sorry!"

Brendan laughs, tightening his grip. "So when you heard us in there you thought you'd come and take a good look?!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! But there's some bloke wanting to speak to you!"

Brendan releases him, shoving him across the bar and cracks his next. "Who?" He buttons up his shirt and re-knots his tie. Rhys tells him he's upstairs waiting and Brendan barks at Rhys to make Steven a drink.

As he climbs the stairs, he sees Simon Walker standing with his hands linked behind his back and lanky in his own shadow. He claps slowly as Brendan approaches.

"Very impressive, I must say." Simon eyes the club and Brendan feels as if someone has slid a shard of glass under his collar.

"What can I do you for?"

"I just wanted to say: businessman to businessman, that although a lesser man might frown upon someone new swooping in, stealing their staff right under their nose, there are no hard feelings here." Simon's smile was a lizardy slither.

"Come again?"

"Young Steven Hay. Surly little council rat. Scrawny little thing – you must remember! You did take him from me after all!" His voice chimes like the childcatcher's trail of lollipops as he skulks the room.

"Him?" Brendan shrugs with an upturned smile. "He told me he quit."

Simon runs his fingers along an undusted railing and inspects his fingertips. The club will be open in a few weeks and he hopes the walls won't be lined with vomiting students like in Simon's. He wants the paying kind, the folk who take a risk on a few pills and wash it down with a line of coke. Not the sort who'll smoke hash and then puke the contents of a kebab on the pavement at four in the morning.

"All the same," Simon continues, "no hard feelings. You'll want to watch him though, keep him on a short leash or he'll get into all sorts of trouble."

"I'm sure I can cope."

"Yes," Simon says, unblinking. "I'm sure _you_ can."

There's something in the way Simon emphasises it, that makes Brendan realise that he's done his research. Or that perhaps he's heard Brendan's assault on Rhys. He hopes Simon knows he's been inside, knows that he butchered a lowlife gang leader's face with his boot. Hopes he's in the dark about Danny Houston's set up and double cross, that he lured him into a bear's trap, with Vinnie's help, because he was desperate to get rid of him. He hopes Simon only hears the story that makes him sound like a monster.

::: :::

The club's been open three months; profits behind the bar are slow; he's got quite the refined junkie clientele. He's shaved the beard back into his trademark moustache and when Ste pouts over his loss, Brendan ensures the moustache travels the length and breadth of his body. Steven's the one he trusts the most and hands out the biggest deals to, but he makes him work the bar too because the girls love him and he likes fucking him in that tight black uniform.

There's not a day where Brendan doesn't take him back to the flat. And Brendan learns he's been squatting for years, having run from home at sixteen and he has no one and nothing to his name.

Sometimes their sex is rough and aggressive because Ste's lost him a deal and he's pissed off and Ste's narky and defensive. Sometimes it's tender and lazy because Ste's made him a huge packet of cash but it's more than the money he appreciates. Sometimes it's submissive and obedient because Brendan likes playing boss and Ste gulps down the power play. And sometimes it feels too intimate to call fucking and all he wants to do is protect Steven.

There's jealousy among the other staff knowing Ste gets the better deals but he's silenced the remarks that Ste's his rent boy by firing anyone that suggests Steven's misdemeanours are repaid on his knees, even if sometimes when things get heated Brendan will stroke his hair down and tells him to make it up to him.

He finds himself preoccupied in thought over him and there's that thunder in the distance of Simon Walker, sitting and waiting for his moment to strike. It makes him nervy and reckless and sometimes he'll not let Steven out of the club on a deal: Mr Five can do it. Ste blows up at him in frustration and petulance and he strops like a child alone in the rain and does the deal anyway. When he returns to the club, beaten and ego bruised too, Brendan puts one of the girls in charge and takes Steven home. Home. He's never thought of it like that before, but Steven's more often in his bed than he is.

The next night Ste's up and out on a deal before Brendan has a say and he's sat all night locked up in the office on pins worried about him. Not that he lets onto anyone. He reassures himself of the client, Steven's safe with them and he drinks to blur the edges of his anxiety.

Ste enters the office after closing time at three with his hood pulled up, looking like your street corner yob. Brendan pulls it down and cups his face.

"I don't need you to look after me."

"Don'tcha?" He thumbs over the dark brown scuff mark on Ste's cheek, the skin under his eye turning mauve. Pressing his mouth against the nick of skin and slumping back into the chair, he circles his neck with a crack. He loves the boy – even if he's not said it aloud - he could wrap him up and protect him and never let him go. Ste tilts his chin up and says he's been used to the trouble for years and Brendan knows it, believes Ste's been through a mangle and still comes out fighting. His knuckles are scuffed from hitting back. He knows the limits of his safety, there's figures he won't approach in the club or the street and names he remembers from working with Walker that shoot a chill through him. Brendan knows all this, but won't let anyone steal Ste from him, not now.

He looks cold from the deal, all blueish cheeks and shivery but Brendan knows what would distract him from work. "C'mere." He beckons him with two fingers.

Steven whips his t-shirt off his head like a habit. Brendan worships the cut of him. Ste's started working out just for Brendan's pleasure (even if he denies it to his face): there's a little definition there now under all that golden skin. They kiss, Ste naked across Brendan's suited lap and sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. Brendan's palms shrink to Ste's lumber and his fingers are dry and rough against the boy's milky softness. He opens up, letting Steven's tongue glide into his mouth and hum against him.

Making a V-shape with his first two fingers, Brendan draws them down across the rump of each cheek and feels Steven's hips pull down until his spine arches like a stretching feline. When Brendan's coated his two fingers in saliva, a whimper escapes Ste's lips like an invitation. Brendan touches him, ploughing up his crack from his balls to where it dents his spine and he needs a little more give before Brendan can really hit home. He pulls open the drawer and slicks Ste with lube so the first two fingers slip in all too easily. Ste's palms lever himself up and he rides back on Brendan's fingers, entranced.

"I'm worried about Walker," Brendan says, vulnerable at last whilst Ste is so exposed.

"You wanna do this now?" Ste says, voice hitching when Brendan drums three fingers deep. "_Fuck._"

He's not told Steven that someone's been leaving empty voicemails on all his phones or that anonymous notes hand-delivered to the flat read _You owe me_, _An eye for an eye_. He had thought it could be fragments of Liverpool chasing him here, but when he opens the next envelope and there's explicit photographs and CCTV print outs of him and Steven. He knows exactly who it is.

He can't focus now he's raised it and he's blurred and distant, like he's watching his life from above. Steven dislodges from his lap and pulls his hoodie on. He's flushed in the face and fully erect and he heads to the staff toilets to shake it off.

"Don't go anywhere," he says to Brendan and stuffs himself into his joggers, kissing Brendan on the cheek. "We'll sort it, yeah?"

Brendan has the photos and the notes spread out across the desk as he chews hard skin at his finger nail. It's the drink making him worry, that and knowing when Steven's on a deal he has to be alone and silent, he can't take Brendan's calls and be in his grasp. He's never worried about anyone apart from himself before and it's messing with his head. Whatever Steven's solution it'll be juvenile and impractical; he puts more faith in Walker's sanity than Brendan does, and perhaps he's right to – he's worked for him after all – but Brendan's seen what men like Walker can be capable of and he's not prepared to risk it. He thinks about running – he can feel the wind rushing past and Steven breathless at his side - and he wonders when Steven started appearing in all his visions of the future.

Simon Walker needs to die and Steven needs to know he's loved.

Those are the two thoughts niggling the centre of his skull when his mobile rings and he doesn't even see that the CCTV screen on the monitor have been switched off and a blocked number is calling.

"Yeah?"

"Brendan Brady." Just from the tone of it, he's grinning manically.

Brendan stiffens in his seat and all senses spike his nerve endings. "Simon Walker."

He tuts on the other end. "I really thought you'd be cleverer than this."

Brendan's only half-tuned to Simon and he's on his feet, out of the office and looking for Steven.

"What do you want Walker?"

"You've not got the hint yet?! I would have thought it was obvious the moment you moved into my patch and took – _stole_ – what's mine."

He checks the toilet stalls one by one and each empty, but he won't lose his cool on the phone. "He's a big boy, he can chose to work for who he likes."

He doesn't need to see Simon to hear the anger shrieking through his tone, like a penny dragging across a pane of glass. "No one makes a fool of me. If you really want him Brendan then you'll have to come and get him."

"Where is he?" He wasn't sure how it was possible for the blood to stream from his face and feel hot all at once.

"It's a shame really," Simon continues as if he hasn't heard the question at all, "Cos I've seen the photos and the videos and you do really make quite the couple. Is he as good at sucking cock as he looks? I wish I'd known, paying him would have been a lot cheaper."

"What the fuck have you done with him?"

"Easy." Walker clicks his tongue across his teeth as if he's wagging his finger with it and scolding him. "There's no game if I tell you straight away, is there?"

Brendan imagines him with Steven somewhere dark and cold and running a skeleton finger across his cheekbone when he cries.

"You know, when I first met you and I already knew your name and what you were doing in my city, I thought you'd at least be a bit suspicious of me. But no, just like your old pal Danny said, you're nothing when you've got a weak spot."

A shiver stops his heart and his first thought is that his relationship with Steven is all a trick, a Machiavellian scheme by the new team of Simon and Danny to get him locked away for good. He feels bile rise in his throat but Simon won't tell him if Steven is all part of the plan or not, so either way he's going to have to confront him. There's a gun in the safe and Walker has laid out the clues masterfully he discovers, when letters on the back of the CCTV footage printouts collate to form a postcode.

::: :::

It's four thirty am and there's a block of rotting flats standing in front of him. The rain lashes against his face and he knows he's en route to his downfall. The place is abandoned and he jumps the stairs two at a time screaming Steven's name until he finds him on the fifth floor, tied to a knackered radiator. His face is raw from tears, his eyes drowning in them and his lips are chapped from the choking cloth gagging his mouth. The sight of him chokes Brendan and he staggers back. The fury comes first and he wrecks the room, bellowing threats to the invisible Simon.

Steven's eyes widen in alarm when Brendan comes near and he shakes his head violently. The phone rings.

"Me again! Forgot to tell you the rules." Simon enjoys this far too much, his sick pleasure seeps through the phone like knell at the end of life. "Fifteen minutes. If you free him or even attempt to escape then I kill him. I've got a bullet just ready to sink into his pretty skull. Sadly for poor Steven, he's gonna end up dead however this story ends, because what I'm gonna need you to do is simple. I need you to kill him. And if you don't, I will."

Steven whines with sobs in the corner and Brendan's calm against all instinct trying to hatch an escape.

"I won't." He can't.

Simon laughs at the other end. "Hasty. You've got a whole fourteen minutes forty seconds left to debate this. Strictly speaking there's not much of a choice, I know. You're going down for murder whatever happens."

"Don't be such a coward Simon, show your face." Brendan forces himself to look away from Steven's flaring nostrils and the whimpers he makes.

"The question you've got to ask yourself is, Brendan: is he really worth life in prison for? Cos the door's open, run away, leave him to me. No one's gonna miss him if I kill him! Why do you think he was such a perfect piece of bait? He's got nothing to lose. He didn't have to do much before you were drooling all over him."

"You're lying," Brendan says, his anger spits across the room.

"How can you be sure?" There's a long pause and then Simon's line booms with laughter. "Don't tell me you love him?! Oh how tragic."

Brendan can't face looking at Steven. Can't bring himself to have his worst fears confirmed, can't face what it means if he loves him back either.

"Tick tock," Simon says, "Thirteen and a half minutes."

Brendan thinks about calling Simon's bluff, grabbing Steven and running out of there as fast as they can make it. He imagines them running again – free.

"Danny said you wouldn't fall for it twice, said Vinnie's little betrayal would stay with you. So I knew this had to be bigger, had to mean more and last longer. If Vinnie's flirtation got you eighteen months then falling in love with Steven means life in prison by my watch. This just happens to be even sweeter."

Brendan sits on the discarded mattress on the floor and presses his palms to his eyes. There's ten minutes left and for the first time since speaking to Walker, Brendan looks at Steven. He looks more fragile and battered than ever, Walker certainly hasn't been kind in getting him here, and there's an oozing patch of blood on his leg; Walker's made sure he won't be able to run. Their eyes meet and Ste's ache with pleading. It's only then with a damp cheek that Brendan realises he's crying.

"I can't bear to know it's all been a lie," he says, hardly loud enough. He sees Steven shake his head, begging in a muffled noise. Would he just say anything to be free?

"I must congratulate him on his acting though. A fine performance if he made someone like you want to settle down."

Then Brendan sees he's not on the phone any more but standing in the door way. He leaps to his feet and shoots, ricocheting off the doorframe. Walker shoots Steven in the shoulder and the blood gushes from the wound. He bleats in pain with Walker's gun pointing right at his skull. Brendan screams, roaring straight from his chest, ordering Walker to kill him instead.

"Who d'you reckon's got the fastest trigger finger, Steven? Me or lover boy?" Walker says running the tip of his gun up Ste's throat and then back to his temple.

"All this just to get me sent down? Really?!" Brendan's desperate now, his eyes fix on Simon, words aiming to coax him into a deal. There's not a scratch of hope left, there's no choice here, no exit and no escape.

"Oh so you've finally twigged that Stevie boy doesn't love you back?" Simon pouts and grips Ste's hair when he starts to shake his head. Brendan's seen the colour bleed from his skin like the fade of time as he feels the seconds pass in his head. What's life become that he isn't the selfish lone soldier? It's not prison or being framed for murder that streaks through his body like a knife shredding all life from him.

"I don't care." Brendan starts circling closer to Walker. "I love him and I won't hurt him."

"Eight minutes."

Brendan looks down at Steven, his face wrecked with tears and bruises. Brendan's breath hitches. "I love you, Steven." The words resonate from the walls. They're closing and Walker's twelve steps ahead, chasing Brendan through any half formed plans so they fall apart at the seams.

He thinks there's a nod there, from Steven, an understanding, a fresh wave of tears. But he doesn't have time to register it, he doesn't have time to realise that there's no game, no trick, no act. Steven loves him back. It's too late; the barrel's circle rings his temple. Steven's his one and final thought.

The trigger's been pulled and it's the end. The bullet hits his brain and all he feels is white noise, he can't hear Steven's wail rip the air and die away.

And then he feels the wind as he runs, Steven breathless beside him until the end.


	4. A Lick of Paint

_A/N: The continued support for this series of AU one shots is beyond lovely. Thank you so much. This week's offering is something very different and lighter than my last two dark stories. This story sees straight painter and decorator Ste meet and work for openly gay landlord Brendan Brady. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts and I hope you enjoy! _

_:::_

_::_

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* * *

A Lick of Paint

* * *

He hadn't even offered you a cup of tea.

That was your initial thought on that very first Monday of the biggest renovation job you'd had on your books for a good year. It had been a bad time of it for the decorating business, so much so you had a long and difficult discussion about money with Amy over the weekend. She'd wanted to spend the summer holidays from work with your kids, taking them out and spoiling them which she didn't get to do when she was stuck in a grotty classroom term time as a teaching assistant. Instead you managed to get her to agree to taking some part time till work in Price Slice and send the kids to her dad's while you worked the six weeks doing up the property for this gravelly voiced Irish fella.

When you arrived on the Monday, carrying your portfolio of previous clients up the stairs with you – he owned the top four flats – you started to think this wasn't your standard job when he greeted you without a shirt on. It wasn't the welcome you were expecting and you stood awkwardly in the doorway looking at your notes while he stretched a t-shirt over himself. A ruffled bloke had brushed past you on the stairwell and then the penny dropped with a little _oh_ before the Irish man clicked his fingers in your face.

"So – uhm – Mr Brady, what can I do for you?" you asked, lifting the pencil from behind your ear – Amy loved teasing you about your ears being big enough to stash a whole pencil case behind, but she liked stroking them anyway – and you flicked open your notepad to begin.

He didn't seem bothered about a quote, or expenses for that matter, and you figured he must be worth a few quid. You paid attention to his clothes then, you couldn't see the label, but it looked pricey and he smelt like money. His scent was a man who didn't get his hands dirty in emulsion and sawdust at any rate. He wanted all the flats stripped from top to bottom of the tatty wallpaper and painted cream – you had to go neutral for selling them on – and laminate wood throughout, except for the bathroom. You'd heard all this on the phone from one of you employees who'd got them the job and had known Brendan (Mr Brady) from his other business – a local nightclub. He hadn't mentioned that Brendan swung the other way, but you supposed it didn't matter. All the gays knew each other: you guessed that was why Nick knew Brendan in the first place – it all made sense now.

Brendan walked you round all the flats and you made copious notes, working out costing on your pocket calculator, clumsily dropping it a few times at his feet. He watched you pick it up – never offering – and then seemed to want to know more about you.

You pulled your t-shirt down at the back and tried to second guess that his questions about your age and personal life were his subtle ways of finding out if you were up for the job. You weren't no cowboy. You tried directing his focus onto the recent photos of the properties you'd done up and felt under the spotlight when you drilled out the facts. _Twenty-one, apprentice decorator at seventeen, own business aged nineteen, twokidsandagirlfriend. _You rolled out the last one in a single breath just in case he suspected anything. His smile relaxed you when you made yourself remember he was just like Nick and Nick had never pounced. Even though Nick was the pouncing type, so you'd heard.

You and your small team regrouped on the Wednesday in Brendan's flats and you bought your own kettle this time. You didn't see Brendan as the type to be coming round with the biscuits every few hours. He popped his head in the flat now and again to check up on how you were getting on. His sense of humour clashed with your abrupt ways and you stood, arms folded and affronted.

"Missed a bit," he said, pointing to a stray crumble of wallpaper in the corner.

"I ain't done that bit yet," you said and then remembering he was employing you added, "Mr Brady." You wondered whether you could get sued for accidentally scolding him with the wallpaper steamer. Definitely.

"Crack on," he said. You waited until he left the room to roll your eyes.

He stayed in the building most days and you were growing used to his humour, snipping back and finding your own ways to counter him. It became routine for him to pass comment on your work and for you to banter back about things you were learning about him.

He stopped you one lunchtime when you had a paintbrush in one hand and a cheese sandwich in the other. The rest of the lads had gone down the road for a pub lunch but you and Amy were still saving the pennies and couldn't afford such luxuries.

"That's a cute lunchbox," he said, loitering in the doorway, coffee in hand.

You hopped off the step ladder and sat on one of the overturned crates. "It's me son's."

"And here was me thinking you just loved Bob the Builder, Steven" he said. You were disappointed he didn't have a novelty mug you could mock. "Still, it's nice your girl cut your sandwiches in four for that dainty little mouth of yours."

You rolled your eyes right in front of him now like you'd fallen into the habit of doing. "Amy makes great sandwiches. You're missing out y'know."

He shrugged. "The female species lack a certain something for me." His smirk was overshadowed by the coffee mug.

You coloured, desperately swallowing the lump of bread to clarify. "I didn't mean –"

"I know." He winked, drummed his fingers on the door frame and left you to it.

You and Amy would exchange stories about your days over dinner in the evenings when the kids were tucked up; she about the grouchy customers of Price Slice and you about your little workforce that she'd met and then about Brendan. Every time you attempted to relay a conversation you'd had with him, you'd find yourself pinching at the cheeks with a grin. But the way you told them left Amy with empty smiles and the impression he was rude and blunt. You'd defend him but Amy's comments would leave you reassessing him the next day.

"I'm still surprised you find things to talk about with him," she said, washing up the plates. "I mean, from what you've said he's rich and old and a bit of a jerk by the sounds of it."

"He's alright," you said, remembering how intimidated you were of him to begin with and how you'd overheard him on the phone scaring the wits out of someone. But the guys in your team didn't really seem to get him; you were the only one who laughed at his bad jokes and dared banter with him. But then with two kids and a business, you'd lived more than they had. In some ways you were closer to a thirty year old man than they were.

When you told Amy he was gay her perspective changed and she clapped with excitement over the thought of setting him up with Nick.

"I dunno," you said stretching to put the dishes away. "I don't think they'd really go for each other."

She gave you a little squeeze. "Oh come on, it'd be great if Nick settled down and found someone!"

"I don't think he's the settling down type."

"Who, Nick or Brendan?"

"Both." You'd seen a few men leave first thing in the morning in crumpled clothes and never the same face twice. "Comes with the culture, dunnit? They always say that about gays."

"What's he look like, this Brendan?"

"Tall. Brown hair. He's got a moustache," you said, doing the action. You'd exhausted all your tache jokes on him and he pretended not to have heard them all a hundred times.

She grimaced. "Ugh. Is he good looking, though?"

"How am I meant to know?" Girls always asked this as if you had an opinion on other men or even looked at them beyond comparing. Brendan was taller, hairier, paler, more muscular, more masculine. You didn't know if any of that was considered good looking, but you would have preferred a body like his. Shirts didn't bag around his chest and trousers didn't hang off his body and lose the shape of him.

"Well Nick's gorgeous."

"Oi you!" You laughed and threw your arms around her tiny waist. She put her rosy lips against yours.

"Such a waste," she said with a smile. He always flirted with her and you wondered if that was allowed or expected if you knew your sexualities would never cross. Harmless they called it.

The next day of work you almost collided foreheads with Nick as you whistled your way up the stairs to the flats. The whistling kept running out of steam when your smile interrupted it, Brendan hated your whistling and constantly ribbed you about it, saying you were tone deaf and who let the cat in. You'd arrived early to collect paint swatches you'd left behind and planned to head to B&Q before the day started, but you met Nick coming in the opposite direction. His shirt hung out at the back.

A nervous laugh wisped from your nose. "What you doin' here?"

He flicked his eyes upwards and then leant on the railings of the stairs, licking his top lip. "Overtime," he said, posture puffed out smugly.

"What?"

He smiled from the side. "Spent the night with Brendan."

You felt pinpricks of heat on your cheeks making your jaw solid. "You did what?"

"Oh come on Ste!" he said, elbowing you in the side. "It was just sex. No harm in that."

Little pockets of anger smacked together inside you, fixing you to the spot. You couldn't believe he was treating it so meaninglessly, so unprofessionally. You didn't think you had to set rules like he was some sort of animal, you thought it was clear that those lines weren't crossed. It was typical of Nick, typical of a gay man, not being able to settle for one partner and not being able to think of anything else but sex.

He watched your face steel in coldness as you kept check on your violent temper. "Come on mate," he said.

You shook your head. "I don't want you back here on his job. You can piss off and find some other boss to make a fool of, you hear me? I don't care about you shagging about in your personal life, I know it's what you lot do, but I don't want it brought into work under my nose. Do one, Nick."

"You're an uptight wanker, Ste." Nick pushed past you, throwing his jacket on.

You threw paperwork across the room, hot fists, as you tried to find the paint charts you'd lost. Brendan strode into the room and span you around by the shoulder. The force of his expression silenced you.

"I won't employ bigoted pricks, you hear me? Not in my flat." He shoved your chest lightly and you'd have walked out on a different contractor for less. "I thought you were better than that, Steven."

"It weren't about that," you said, stepping up to him.

"Oh yeah? What was it about then?" You could see a stretch of vein on his forehead raised in anger and his chest swelled, muscles stretching the expose of where his shirt lay unbuttoned.

You pressed your hand to your forehead and looked to the dust sheet spread out over the sofa in the corner. You'd look there next for the chart. Brendan was still a closer proximity than you'd like.

"It was about him being unprofessional. I don't go around sleeping with the people I work for and I don't expect him to either. It's not right." You looked him in the eye even though you know the blush on your neck had spread. "It's not about you and him being gay, okay? I've got no issue with that."

Brendan eyed you cooly for a long few seconds. "I want you to rehire him," he said, invading your space. He dug his hand into your back jean pocket and pressed your phone into your hand. "Call him." He closed your palm around the phone and looked you squarely in the eyes like you were under the microscope.

He waited for you to fumble for Nick's contact before leaving, pausing to say, "And you needn't worry about it happening again. I ain't interested in him," – he started walking out the door – "Just so you know."

::: :::

It became worse when it was his own flat you'd started painting. He seemed to make it his mission to kiss a guy in front of you and watch for your reaction. You couldn't confirm his suspicions, that it made your stomach twist, so you'd stare on and fake indifference. He'd flaunt it, his sexuality, leaving you to see the unmade bed and walk about shirtless or in a pair of boxers. You'd couldn't ignore it, he wouldn't let you. Like he was proving a point. Even if you retreated to another room he'd make an excuse to walk through the one you were painting. He shut down any attention Nick gave him, but made more effort with the other decorators, joking and flirting with the other lads, sometimes at your expense.

"Lads how about a calendar? You know, paintbrushes and rollers for your modesty." He leaned up against a sheeted chest of drawers, looking up at Rob on the ladder. You could hear their chuckles and playing up to his attention. "Better not tell the boss." He looked at you and then back at the guys, indicating a cut throat and you turned up the radio to block them out feeling more isolated in your thoughts than ever.

You stopped talking about work with Amy and she'd taken on some late shifts at the shop. You stopped looking forward to work without its joviality. You started recognising the little stings you felt as something greater than annoyance, something under the skin. The paranoia that you'd lost him as a mate started to rile you and the days stretched out ahead to endless loneliness on the job. It was your fault and he continued to punish you for it.

He caught you on another Friday with your lunch, the other lads having gone to the pub. He played with a roller in the magnolia on the floor, sighing as he crouched down there.

"So how is life in the 1950s at home with the missus, Steven?" Brendan rolled up his shirt sleeves to avoid dripping any paint on himself.

His vibes seemed bitter now like lemon in a cut. "Fine," you said.

"Only 'fine'?" He hummed, _ahh_ing as he got to his feet with the roller and applying it to the wall. "How's my hand action?"

"Needs work," you said flatly.

He cocked his head to the side. "Come and show me how it's done then." You touched a hand to his forearm and directed down to his wrist, steering his movements. You puppeteer'd him for a few more strokes and took a step back, narrowly avoiding your trainer in one of the overturned paint lids. "No wonder it's taking you so long with those little chicken arms of yours."

You crossed them. "Missed a bit," you said and watched him smile. He turned and flicked the roller at you until you were freckled white. You picked up a loaded brush to retaliate and started backing off. You thought he was stepping down until he only paused to take off his shirt and recoat the roller.

Squirming you raised your hands to cover your face and flicked the brush until a smattering of white covered his bare chest. You both went back to restock the brushes with paint, firing and ducking and crab-walking over the dust sheets and between paint tins. You ducked under a ladder and when he reached out and swiped, the roller striped your face white.

"That's it!" You wiped your face with the back of your hand and laughed with revengeful glee on picking up a second brush.

"Cheat," he said, crouching behind a covered table.

You sprayed a row of dots over his shoulder blades and he flinched at the cold, standing with such speed that knocked one of the brushes out of your hand and under your feet. You stumbled over it, dislodging your stepping and knocking against the pine wardrobe of the guest room. He pinned you with the roller under your chin and a manic grin. You panted with laughter, brush hovering across his chest ready to sweep right across him. He blobbed your chin and in retaliation you coated his nipple.

His skin bumped with the cold of the paint. "That felt good," he said and you felt the breaths shrink in your chest when he looked at you. His eyes were a dark navy on you in the warm light from the bay window and the speck of paint on his brow had smudged into an oblong. He placed the palm of his hand on your chin and smeared the paint across your cheek, leaving white finger streaks, pleased with himself. It was the first time in ages he'd smiled at you for that long and the warmth of it kept you still and quiet.

"Body paint, huh?" he said, putting a stop to the breathy silence and inspecting his painted torso. You looked as the paint began drying around his hairs. "I'll leave it to your expertise, Steven." He pointed to the walls and you stood there gormless as he unbuttoned the black jeans and motioned towards the shower, heading there. He'd forgotten the shirt so you picked it up in your hands, still warm, and moved it somewhere safer.

::: :::

You couldn't settle during EastEnders. And it wasn't because you hated soaps; or that Amy was so entranced she didn't want to be cuddled up; or because you thought that the two gays in it kissing was a bit much for seven-thirty; or because Lucas had wet the bed and you had to go and sort it. It was because Brendan had restarted your narky banter and was extending it beyond work hours via text. And you kept smirking behind your hand-covered-mouth until he told you he was heading out and he'd see you in the morning. And then you acknowledged it, let the word ring out in all its green and miserable glory.

You were jealous.

And you wouldn't push it, because it had started with this low ache in your belly when the world outside of the jealousy was blurry and distant, and you knew the fixation would pour into each crevice of your brain until something had to give. And there was no sense it in.

You craved friendship was all and you made plans with Darren for the weekend. He'd be glad of the break from the home life with his wife Nancy and you needed the company of someone that wasn't filling your headspace.

And just to be certain you watched porn, two blonde girls going at it, on your laptop when Amy was on a late shift and made love to her when she came home.

You stayed awake until sometime around four.

When you got to work he was kicking out last night's catch. He had a type and you didn't let it pass you by. You were opening the tins of paint to start the bathroom when he came in and leaned in the doorway. In a few hours that'd be wet and he'd have had a white line covering him.

"Anyone'd think you get here early just to have a perve on me in the mornings," he said. He wasn't to know you'd shifted moods in the night. The last he'd heard from you, you were still joking around about tiles and grouting. A topic only he could make entertaining.

You had your back to him as you crouched low mixing the paints. His eyes were hot on your lower back.

"You sent him packing already?" you asked not turning around. The paint swirled gloomily.

"I don't think he's _The One_," Brendan said mockingly.

"So you're just shagging anyone until you find him?" Your head bowed when you realised the mark you'd overstepped.

"We can't all be lucky enough to find our Amys, Steven," he said, making you stand, fists clenched and saw his posture stiffen. "I'm having fun, maybe you should try it some time."

You scoffed. "I don't need to try it. I'm happy with what I've got."

He nodded, arms folded across his body, mouth downturned. "That's good, that's good. Cos I'd hate to think you were going home unsatisfied." You saw the lick of his tongue under the row of his upper teeth.

"I'm satisfied."

"Good." He nodded and he left the flat almost immediately.

When you showed up the next day you made sure you were later than usual, hoping he'd be dressed and whichever sap he'd taken home would be long gone. As you let yourself into the flat there was no sign of him and relief mingled with disappointment. You entered the half-tiled bathroom and realised you'd left the extra tubs of grout in one of the other flats.

The key was in the door and your foot midway into the hallway of the flat when you saw him. Long seconds dragged out as you pieced together the scene in front of you before you realised your intrusion. You threw yourself back into the corridor, slamming the door behind you and the keys cutting into your hand. He'd held your gaze. Head to toe naked, fucking some guy over the arm of the sofa, contorted into such a way the lad's face was hidden. Brendan's mouth had been slack and red, his eyes dark and allured. He'd looked straight into your eyes and not at the body he was inside.

You called in sick to your colleagues.

The next day when you braved heading in, you didn't look at him. You couldn't even meet his eye when he bought pizza for all of you at lunch. The lads teased him for having an empty bed that morning; he laughed it off and you nearly saw your food regurgitated. Rob talked about his struggle getting over his girlfriend and you were welcome for someone else talking until Brendan joined in when passing,

"When you want something, you can't let anything stand in your way," he said to Rob, clapping him around the shoulders. You didn't look up from your pizza. "But in the meantime, I'm sure there are some girls you can pass the time with."

Rob grinned dorkily. "Speaking from experience?"

Brendan laughed. "Not on the girl front, but yeah you could say that. I'm looking for a good distraction tonight."

You waved goodbye to the guys at five thirty when you were on the phone to Amy as she perused the aisles of Price Slice to pick up dinner.

"Whatever you fancy, I'm not bothered," you told her, ending the call eventually after more mundane chat about what she should buy. You vacuumed the room because you were moving onto the next and final flat on Monday. There was still a glow of pride at a completed room, the perfect white edges and lines of exactly straight beige.

You sighed and then felt his hands on your shoulders.

They were gone almost as soon as you felt them. Turning in the tight space between your bodies with your breath held and you head ringing with paint fumes, you kissed him. Your lips combed his with an open mouth, dragging across the soft hairs of his moustache. The delayed moan that circled through your locked mouths came like a confession. But you ended it before his arm slipped around you, deserting his lust and chasing your doubts out the door.

At home you floated above the routine like a ghost, passing through each stage with habit and practice. You stared at her over dinner and thought of the path that took you to her, the one that lead to your future. You could second guess her next question, what you'd watch on TV tonight, what she'd wear to bed, how your third child would look, how you'd spend the summer in three years' time.

You stood in the bathroom, eyeballing your reflection and not a face or a longing you recognised. Under your hands you gripped the sink and the heat filled you, choked you, hammered you. He owned you now.

::: :::

The awareness that he had company only came after you clocked the bare feet and the dressing gown wrapped around himself. He watched you linger on this discomfort, this throbbing jealousy, and knocked the door back until it was open.

"Steven," he said as you began to walk away, causing you to stop in your tracks.

"Forget it," you said like a child. "You're obviously busy."

"You can come and check if you want," Brendan said, stepping back from the door. "There's just me."

You backtracked on your convictions and entered the empty flat, sulkily. One whiskey glass on the kitchen table, one dinner plate. That didn't mean anything, he wasn't the type to wine and dine after all, was he? He watched coldly as you checked the bedroom. Empty. Your body slackened with embarrassment and you skidded past him to make a quick, mortified exit, but his hand on your chest stopped you.

"Stay for a drink," he said.

Silence slugged out between you, his pouring of the drink and you perching on the sofa like it was made of needles. He made you uncomfortable by sitting beside you and clinking his glass against yours. He said something in Irish but you wouldn't let it fill your head.

"So now that we've established – and triple checked – that I'm alone, are you going to tell me why you're here? Or is it just the paintwork in the bedroom you wanted to see?" His mocking rang less humourlessly than you expected, instead beckoned like a flirtation.

You were grateful that the whiskey burned a little and your cough meant he wasn't expecting an answer immediately. "I thought you were going out."

"And you came all the way over here, thinking I'd be out?" Brendan placed his glass down and took yours out of your hand. You were surprised to find yours empty already. He rested his arm back on the sofa, the v-shape of the dressing gown exposing the silver edge of his cross pendant. "I didn't fancy it."

"I thought you were well up for it," you said. You remembered the exact tone of his voice when he'd talked about it, it had clattered around your skull like unwashed dishes in the sink, begging to be attended to. The clock on his wall gave a loud tick. Everything became easier to look at than his face. You noticed where the paintwork had been the victim of your daily distractions.

"I am," he said. "There's still time to pick up a bloke before the night's over." You picked at a thread of your clothes, hating how predatory he sounded, how cold.

"Why doncha then?" Your jaw felt heavy and you wanted to reach for that empty glass and hide behind its rim.

His arm stretched inches away from your neck as it rested on the back of the sofa. "Cos what I want ain't some easy low life sitting in a bar."

His thumb traced your hairline like a stray feather from a pillow. You daren't look at him. Another drink. You wanted another drink. You desires blurred and your eyes caught the fold of robe across his thighs. How long had you been aware that he was naked under it? The thought didn't terrify you. His thumb tracked to the half-moon of your bottom lip.

"What do you want?" he asked, the words seeping into each other because he knew you wouldn't answer if he gave you too much time.

You didn't look him in the eye when you untied the robe and let it shrug open. Curiosity itched your fingertips raw and soon the gown puddled open by his sides. He smelt of a clean dryness, fresh from a shower. His stomach rippled with muscles when he rolled back into the sofa, watching you with intrigue.

"Steven," he said, lifting your chin. He watched you swallow. His voice was like a lick of pleasure in the dark and the thrill of the moment coursed through you. His cock sat erect against him. Shakily you stole his measure of whiskey and threw it into your throat with abandon, sliding the glass across the table when you were done with it and touched him. His flesh flared in your hand and your fear glued you to him. You were clammy and him hot; he panted and you held your breath. His fist knotted the gown as you began a slow pump of his shaft and you could just about watch as his eyes rolled shut and neck lolled back.

He forced you to stop being so tentative, so gentle. Something about the way he sat, throne'd and alert, neck snapped back upright to watch you that challenged you. Your mouth cocked to the side and your grip harshened, his noise came from his nose like the pressure built inside his chest. You knew how fast you knocked one out in the shower, how your wrist could barely match your lust for it. The broads of his fingers rubbed the shaved back of your head like you'd please a cat, his thumb catching the loop of your ear in a way you didn't know you'd like.

You stopped, leaving him to stare at you wordlessly. He watched you leave and fetch the whiskey, knocking it back neat until tears pooled the rims of your eyes and then return to him, courage'd and on your knees. It wasn't what he expected and he glowed from it, tongue relaxed behind his bottom lip and pawing your cheek, your mouth pulling open. It wasn't like you didn't know what to do, you just never had.

When you'd thought about him, your back away from Amy and eyes clamped shut, you'd thought about this moment the most. The firsts. And surprising him, pleasing him. Being the one to make him cum.

His breath eased like steam from a kettle as your tongue coiled around the head of his cock. Your palms rested flat on his thighs and they stayed there, uneasily still. The bitter taste of whiskey was soon overlapped by the heat of flesh, the sourness of him tinged with sea-fresh soap. He held two fingers at the back of your neck, tapping you like a drum and with it, he drilled your mouth, holding back just enough so you didn't scare away.

You face flushed at his groans, the way his pupils darkened. You'd not managed to imagine this level of exquisite detail: the way his breathing raced and his hips rolled and the little growling curses that slipped between the wetter sounds of your mouth. The way _Oh yeah_ sounded from his lips.

He warned you – hissing it between the snap of his teeth – that he was about to cum and expected you to shy back on your heels and let him finish the job. Instead you let his fingertips squeeze into your shoulders. Your cheeks hollowed and one tide of his strained moan swept through you, swallowing. The adrenaline stopped you thinking.

He wiped your lips with his hand and huffed a relieved laugh at the acceleration of events, slumping back against the sofa. You supped on the whiskey again and handed him the bottle when he was outstretched for it.

"That's fine Irish malt you're knocking back like coke, Steven," he said, flapping the robe back over himself.

You stood and stammered, head bowed. "I'm gonna get off." Your jacket was already pulled on your arm when he stood behind you, hands on your shoulders.

He kissed the dip of skin below your ear. "See how you feel in the morning. I wanna fuck you. I want to show you." You turned to face him, raising up onto your toes, closing the gap between your mouths. He took control for the first time, plunging his tongue deep into your mouth, hands sculpting around your body. You flagged, light on your feet, as he overwhelmed you, leaving your mouth stunned ripe.

When he undressed you in the bedroom, you covered up, sheepish and clumsy. He looked on you like a gift. You felt helpless and lumbered with naivety, murmuring nervously as he kissed you from the knee upwards. Your head swam with a glossy vision when he brushed the length of his cock against yours, swelling as an answer to all your questions.

"Tell me you want this," Brendan said, looming above and making the fear blossom in you like blood in water. His hand caressed the small of your back. You'd never known arousal in submission like this. His tongue felt like silk on your nipples and your fears languished to pleasure.

"I want it. I want you." The words ghosted just seconds before his lips were on yours again, taking command of your body.

You knew, as you'd known weeks ago, how you felt. The presence of him inside you, filling you to breaking point, pushing you into orgasm, just confirmed it. His teeth grazed your neck as you writhed, sweat sheening your collar bone and your limbs failing loose. You trembled powerlessly, mind wrecked by new ideas of masculinity and pleasure, Brendan exploring you like no one else had. He already knew you in ways you hadn't yet discovered yourself.

::: :::

You woke to find yourself squinting at a freshly white ceiling and the space beside you empty. You ran your hand across the rippled bedside and the warmth lingered from his body. There was a clench in your stomach, a roll of anxiety that hit you like concrete blocking your veins. Nausea clogged your throat when you cast your gaze to the right and saw the open packet of condoms on the beside cabinet, three scattered across the wood when the box had been grabbed at in a hurry. The memories of him knelt above you filled your sleep ached brain: rolling it onto his solid dick and holding it like it was about to change everything. Things had escalated before that moment.

A part of you hoped he'd left the flat to go about his business, to let you know your place as a one night stand and to leave without more effort and thought, but the other part…that was more complicated and it didn't bear thinking about. But the door opened and he brought you a mug of tea and had his shirt open, flapping free as he walked. You thought about your nails in his chest hair, his nipples hard when you touched them.

"I put extra sugar in," Brendan said, "for the shock." His eyes lit up gently when he looked at you.

He sat on the bed and you felt suddenly aware of being naked under the sheets. You smiled at him as weak as the tea and thanked him, hands shaking around the cup.

"Fancy joining me in the shower?" he said, finger tips wispy on your belly. You froze, dick hardening, and his mouth opened upon you with your surprising automatic acceptance. He melted soft against you in the morning, suckling your bottom lip into his mouth and sliding his hand into your hair. You moaned softly into him and the sound of it snapped you back into the room and what you were doing.

You hand pushed him gently on the shoulder. "I better get off home."

He nodded and freed up the bed. "Your girl Amy'll be wondering where you've been."

You swallowed the knot in your throat and nodded, swinging out of the bed and fumbling for your clothes, trying to ignore the way he looked at you.

You reached home faster than the journey had ever taken and it gave you a chance to park, breathe and get your story settled. The neighbourhood buzzed with familiarity: the postie making his rounds, the neighbour's telly on too loud on account of his hearing aid, the terriers yapping in the front garden. Nothing had changed on the outside.

Leah was in the living room with dolls and lidless felt tip pens spread across the pale carpet, even though you'd argued with Amy over it and she said you'd be able to afford a new carpet now with the pay out from the renovation work. She ran towards you, hugging your legs and you stroked her soft head and tried not to crumble when she said she missed you and why weren't you around to make Saturday breakfast? You made the kids pancakes every Saturday, slathered in Nutella and it gave Amy the morning off. But you found her in the kitchen tidying up cereal bowls, hair scraped back and greying skin from a restless night.

"I was wondering what time you'd show up," she said, harbouring the tone of a woman always abandoned by an unfaithful partner. Except you never stayed out, never gave her cause for worry, never fabricated tales about a heavy night and hiding lipstick on your collar.

You kissed her on her cold cheek.

"Me phone died," you said, weaving past her to stick on the kettle even though you craved a shower more than anything. Even if she couldn't smell it – the musty, manly tang of it – you reeked of sex and you didn't want its reminder.

"I got worried, Ste," she said, folding her arms into one and looking at you like a mother would.

"I'm sorry Ames, I should've used one of the lads' phones but I didn't think, did I?"

"Whose house did you crash at?"

Who wouldn't tell? "I just kipped on Darren's floor," you said, dramatizing a yawn. "Didn't get much sleep." You'd slept like a baby in the lapses between sex, right up against the solid well of Brendan's chest.

"Nancy didn't mind then?"

"Nancy? Nah, you know, she was fine." You placed your hands on her shoulders and squeezed. "I'm just gonna grab a shower."

In the bathroom you shot off a text to Darren. _If Amy asks I was with you all night. I'll explain on Monday_. The shower felt like a relief, cleansing you head and body. You lathered up, tugging bubbles around your groin but never lingering long enough to let your mind wander. You looked at the cheap plastic shower radio in your pokey little bathroom and wondering how the same man who stood in there yesterday, tweaking its dial, could have done what you did last night. If it wasn't for that dull feeling inside your body, you'd have put it down to a dream.

You rinsed the dirt, watching the water spiral away from you down the plug hole, shaved and walked downstairs to see your girlfriend. Darren had replied: _You dirty dog. Expecting the sordid tale on Monday._ And then you saw his name on your phone, your cheeks burning with guilt. _You left a t-shirt here. _

She handed you your tea and you over-compensated with a long kiss, leaving her squirm away in embarrassment because you were never normally that handsy_. _Lucas giggled and ran away from his smooching parents to go and join Leah.

You steeled yourself. "Ames I've gotta pop round the flats for a bit. Something I gotta sort out with Brendan."

"You've only just got home!"

You shook her off and grabbed your keys, swilling the tea around your mouth so you didn't have to speak much. "I won't be long and then we'll take the kids out – yeah?"

He opened the door to you in a shirt rolled up to the sleeves. "Back so soon?" You'd never experienced what the songs said about eyes undressing you until Brendan Brady stood in his doorway, all eyes and smile drawing you in. His hips curved off to the side and you knew it was wise to keep your gaze somewhere neutral and not at the unbuttoned gape of his shirt or where his jeans bulged prominently. He leaned back, letting you slide into the flat against his body.

Your hands wrung together out in front and he saddled over to you. "Drink?"

"I've just come to pick up my shirt."

"That's all you came for, Steven?" he asked, gaze lowering to your lips. You felt unsteady on your feet.

"Brendan I –"

He spun away from you, not seeing the way you built yourself up, squared your shoulders and stood a bit taller. He sat at the kitchen table polishing his boots. You should have known he'd be cold the morning after.

"Stuff's been going on in my head and I'm in a weird place right now. It's been difficult at home and I really like you, you're a great mate and – I dunno what I was thinkin' really. I'm not like that, I've never cheated and never with a bloke before. And I love Amy, she's my world, last night was just...well, it was wrong, alright? I shouldn't've. I'm not gay anyway, so..."

He didn't look up once, undeterred by your anguished displays of confusion and guilt. He polished harder, the brush making sharp scuffing sounds. "Well thank you Steven for that little insight into your _fascinating_ private life thinking that I'd care. It's flattering, it really is. But I've had you now. A bit of fun. So whatever you are, whatever trauma you're going through I'm not interested in your little scared straight boy routine." His icy smile cut right through you, you'd never seen his expression morph into something so detached and ugly, and you felt scolding tears collect in your eyes.

You grabbed your shirt and pushed out of the apartment. "Fuck you." You didn't hear him throw the shoe across the room.

::: :::

You made a real effort at home, took the kids out, spent more time with Amy instead of on the X-Box. You panicked she was suspicious of your motives but you brushed her off when she teased you. All four of you went to dinner with her dad and he joked about engagements (he must have warmed to you after all these years) and you started to think about it as a real possibility. The thought of Monday and seeing _him_ again hurt you, but maybe proposing to Amy might be the way forward.

You had sex with her that night and the differences between the sensations you felt, compared with him, wedged into your brain like a thorn. When you came you locked your gaze with her and mustered that connection, even if there seemed to be a distance even in her eyes which you were sure you were just imagining.

Sunday night she went to the supermarket still wearing her new earrings that she'd bought the other week and came back having forgotten half the items on the list. She sat in the kitchen watching you cook with a large glass of wine. You got the sense she wanted to say something but the doorbell rang and she watched over the pasta while you headed for the door, kicking the kids' toys out of your route.

You saw his outline through the frosted glass, feeling your stomach churn like a car rolling over in a crash. Pulling the porch door to, you opened the front door and glared straight at him.

"How dare you come here?" Your whisper came out raspy with fury.

"I came to check on you," he said, palms open. You'd never seen him in a t-shirt and hoodie before. It looked odd, like he wasn't comfortable despite their obvious softness.

You scoffed and dragged him out of earshot from the doorway. "Check on all your one night stands, do ya?! That must take up most of your day."

He rocked his head to the side, layering on the sarcasm. "That stings Steven, it stings."

"Oh go fuck yourself, will you? You made it clear already. You only wanted me cos I was a challenge. Well you won, didn't you? So give yourself a pat on the back!" You shoved his shoulders, hobbling back a little where the paving slab met the lawn and you wanted to escape him.

He caught your arm. "I ain't after a game, Steven. I ain't celebrating if you're in there living the Good Life with your missus. It's messy."

You flared, teeth gritted and trying to keep a lid on your volume. "You started this, you confused me!"

Brendan scoffed and started walking away from you. "Yeah, _I_ made you come onto me, did I? Forget it. I don't do confused guys."

Despite yourself and the neighbours with their windows open, you called after him. "You can't just walk away! It's cos of you all this! You can't just start up these feelings and then leave me to deal with them on me own. It's is all new to me, this."

You couldn't second guess his next move. He turned, grabbed the front of your polo shirt in his hand and pulled you round the side of the house where the wheeliebins stood waiting for the Tuesday collection. He pushed you up against the wall of your family house and thrust your back hard against the sharp pebbledash, slamming his mouth against yours. You staggered into the weight of his kiss, relenting and your nose folded into his cheek. The ferocity of the kiss hurt from the inside out. It clawed away until your uncomfortable and forbidden thoughts rose to the surface, the shell of estate-bred homophobia and the casing of a 'normal' man fractured and you were left with only one overriding thought.

Next door's cat eyed you when you broke apart, your lips felt inflated, obvious, just as you heard Amy's call.

"Ste? Who's at the door?"

You straightened up and rushed round to the front to answer her, hoping you were more together than you felt. Your shirt cheated awkwardly at the back, mossy from the wall.

"It's just Brendan," you called through the hall.

"Well invite him in then!"

She popped her head around the door and smiled brightly. "Hello! We're just serving up, we've got plenty to go around."

"That's kind of you – Amy – but no, I better be off. I just came to speak to your boy Steven here."

The look you exchanged made you feel sick.

"Oh okay," she said. "All sorted, is it?"

He looked at you and rocked on his feet. "We'll see." There wasn't a hint of light or a tease in his face and he left without another sentence. Your feet felt leaded as you carried them through the house and sat down to eat. You were grateful that she wanted to watch a movie because the disconnect you felt meant you couldn't even scrape together small talk.

::: :::

The morning routine was like any other, except you hadn't slept and the tiredness felt like a noose as you lifted yourself out of bed earlier than usual. Amy was out of bed when you'd showered and she sat reading the messages on her phone. You looked at the clock in rapid bursts before the minute hand had even shifted. She noticed your agitation and sat with her knees drawn up to her chin. You resented how childlike she looked when you were about to break her.

"You look a bit peaky," she said, smothering you with her care. You stood by the window and the natural light shrunk around you.

"Ames," you said, covering your face as you breathed. "I can't – and I'm so sorry, more sorry than I can say – but, I've met someone."

Your words pierced the air and you watched her make sense of them, mouthing them in disbelief. It felt like a whole hour had dragged between your dialogue. "What do you mean, 'met someone'?"

The coward's way out would be not to look at her and you didn't, fidgeting with the rougher skin on your fingers. It was a nervous habit you'd picked up as a boy and worse now when your job meant your hands grew weathered and sore. You didn't' answer – couldn't – you allowed her to piece together graphic details of her own imagining.

"You've slept with someone else?!" she asked, unfolding herself from the bed and pacing tearfully. Usually it was your kids who padded the carpet barefoot in their pjammas.

"Yeah." It came out quiet and fast, like it would mean less at speed.

She exhaled clutching her shoulders and tears sliding down her cheeks. "Who?" She asked, almost deafened by her sob-clogged voice.

Your own tears fell. "Brendan."

"What?!" She faced you, almost beyond recognition with her puffy cheeks and red shot eyes. The last name she expected. It hardly sounded like a name to her. He could see her think back to yesterday evening, how blind she'd been to it all, the long hours away from home working in this man's house. This stranger with his overbearing posture and rough voice. The calm older eyes and the menacing facial hair of a man with too much power and too much bite. "Brendan?!"

"Yeah."

Her mouth twisted like knotted rope. "You had sex with Brendan? But, he's – he's a man."

"Yes." A sob heaving your chest. You felt selfish crying, but you couldn't prevent it and even when she pounded you with her fists in your chest desperately, you couldn't stop. She stumbled to the bed, too exhausted to hit you any longer even if the force was minimal. You crouched beside her. "I'm so sorry."

"What good's a sorry, Ste?" She wiped her face with the back of her hand, eyes glassy when you made contact. The sun went in outside and you were left with the greying haze of your bedroom and a car alarm breaking through your silence.

She spoke again, quieter. "I don't understand. You're not gay. How can you be gay?"

All you could see was the bowed crown of her head, the way it trembled as she breathed through her crying. You tried to touch her hand but she flinched away.

"I think I am," you said and it rushed out of your lungs and washed back over you in a cool breath.

Her eyes squeezed shut. Of course she was imagining the pair of you twisted together like some sort of perversion. Her head brimmed to the top with all the ignorance paired with gay men that you'd both been brought up believing. The camp, the diseased, the unnatural. "So it's my fault?" Her lips shook and you could feel the anger sheathed around her teeth. "I made you gay, is that what you're telling me? That I forced you into this – YOUR children out there?!" She jabbed her arm in the direction of where your oblivious blondes slept.

You gulped. "No! I love the kids," faltering, "I love you!"

You'd never heard her scream. It vibrated through her throat and stung the air. You thought of her late sister and how she'd cried the same tears over the same betrayal – a twist of fate that life could be cruel twice to the same family.

"Get out! Get out of this room, get out of this house! I don't want to look at you!"

She flung a photo frame at the wall behind you and it smashed, obliterating the glass in an instant, the photo sliding out pathetically limp. You left her, calling Nancy – and apologising for the time – and asked her to come over and look after your family. You checked on the kids, kissing them softly and told them their mummy was unwell and they should play in their rooms if they can't head back to sleep.

Nancy arrived in just fifteen minutes, shooting you a look of pity when you greeted her tearfully as you sat on the steps of the house.

"Are you okay? What's gone on? Are you ill?"

You felt even worse telling her, knowing any sympathy she had ready to unleash would be ripped out from the root and thrown in your face. You looked at her soft pixie features and already imagined them contorting into hard, venomous lines.

"I've just told Amy that I'm gay." You inhaled like you were tackling a climb. "And she doesn't want me in the house. And course I'll go but I wanted you to look after the three of 'em while she calms down."

Nancy's eyes had widened, white and gleaming. "Gay?! That's ridiculous. What do you mean you're gay?"

"A man. I've. I've met a man." You picked up your jacket and shook your head, buried in your hands and pushed past her to the car. "I'm so sorry," you said, choking back the sob as you hid away in the vehicle and drove away. You hadn't known back then, not until days later, that Amy's outburst was also laced with guilt. She'd been wondering for days how to tell you that she had also fallen for someone else. Only then, she hadn't slept with Mark.

::: :::

The steering wheel had dented a leathery imprint on your forehead when the tap on the window made you sit up and look out of it. He'd lowered himself, eyes just under the rim of the window edge and flicked his eyebrows up, imploring. You made no real attempts to move and after a moment of waiting, he saw you'd unlocked the doors and he climbed in the passenger seat beside you.

He released a dormant puff of air and drummed his fingertips on his knees, clearing his throat several times to make space for the words that were supposed to comfort or reassure you.

Your lips were swollen and wet when you kissed him and a sob made your throat close and stutter. The new loose tears made his cheeks damp and you pulled away embarrassed. His hand was locked over yours on an open stretch of his chest. Your fingers curled away from the wiry hair there. When you opened your mouth to speak, your breathing tumbled like a child's hiccups and you had to stop several times so you could make sense of what you were saying.

"I've not come here because…" you paused, "I'm not here cos I'm expecting anything." You were ungainly as you wiped your face over your forearm; you could see the state of yourself in the mirror. "I know you don't do relationships and I'm just some confused bloke with two kids and a-" You sighed long and hard with your palms over your face. "I don't even know why I came here."

You didn't expect him to sweep you up into a passionate kiss and dry your eyes, telling you that he loved you the moment he saw you. And he didn't.

He sat looking out the windscreen with you whilst you rubbed sleeves under your eyes and waited until your breath slowed to silence. "I'm willing to give it a go, if you are."

You looked up, blinking.

"A relationship, Steven." He looked at you once, you thought you saw a half-smile under his moustache, and then back straight ahead at the cars parked in front of yours. You thought about how many decisions were made in the front seats of a car: turn left or turn right. Like a crossroads, the _okay_ you gave him carved out a very different path and erased the route that came with a no.

Months on from this moment, you'd remember sitting in the car with the pine air-freshener dangling in your view like a cat with a ball of string when he told you he loved you for the first time. You'd remember sitting next to the man whose legs were too long for the seat position and who had changed everything. Back then, he was the man who'd never believed in love and you were the doomed man who'd fallen for him.

The dent from the steering wheel was fading and you moved your gaze to look at Brendan. He stared straight ahead still. You weren't sure what was on that horizon that kept him fixated for so long - you looked - but maybe it just wasn't in your eye line yet.

::: :::


	5. Corruption

Your comments and support are amazing – I'm beyond touched. After this one I think I might have two or three left in me. But there may be a little wait for the next one. Hope you enjoy.

_**Summary**__: When a young tearaway from Manchester, Ste, gets on the wrong side of the law in Dublin, the Garda are on his tracks. Everything changes when married cop Brendan Brady grows obsessed by more than just the lad's crimes_

_A/N: I know next to nothing about the police system nor the Irish Garda so this is completely entirely invented. Also born out of three series of Love/Hate in the space of a fortnight._

_:::_

_::_

_:_

* * *

**Corruption**

* * *

You were too old for this: chasing a hoodie down streets with your heart clapping a thousand times a minute. You only ever caught a glimpse of him in the dark colours, low riding jeans and a youth that ran rings around you and the rest of the Guards. He was up over walls and under ripped fences and through fractured metal sheeting, quicker than you were.

Of course you knew him. Notorious was the word they saved for criminals like him. Steven Hay – or, what was most commonly scored across cars and sprayed across Dublin walls – Ste. His history had almost become folklore in the station; everyone was well versed in his life story. From the long hours you'd spent in rooms with grey-jumpered criminal psychs (you pitied them and their hazel-eyed sympathies for these scum) you'd guess they'd pin his anti-social behaviour on a _troubled_ childhood. His running about town was a cry for help or some other cliché. Excuses. Whereas you'd internalised yours into the hard hand of the law, Steven had legged it onto a boat at the age of sixteen and spent the last two years squatting, stealing, joyriding and dabbling in arson. You had nothing on him yet but you wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he'd added dealing to the list. Still, you couldn't get an affirmative on that because if he was involved, your contacts weren't ready to hand him in. Yet.

What you knew for certain, was that Steven Hay needed to be locked up. For years. His presence had become a constant headache and he seemed to be at the centre of every pit of Dublin with some crew or another. He never had a permanent address so pining him down was a paperwork nightmare and for all his minor offences he had riled you up the wrong way. Scum like Steven would fester and mould until he'd grown into someone whose swarm was too large to dispose of.

Having lost sight of him again, and all of you puffing your chests out like you were ten years closer to retirement than you actually were, you headed back to the station to continue filing other reports you had to deal with. You looked up his records, the sharp defiant eyes of his mug shot staring back at you. The latest info on him had been garnered after his stint in juvie when he was forced into sixth month's community service scrubbing the walls he'd defaced.

His elfin features and little upturned nose brought back a brief thrill that usually you kept so buried that you'd almost forgotten who you were.

When your shift ended you drove a few streets away and swapped SIM cards in your phone. Your pay packet was stretched this month – Eileen claimed the housekeeping you gave her just wasn't enough – and it was time to call in a few favours.

"Brady," said the voice on the other end of the phone. "I thought you might call."

"You're talking me for a fool, Peter," you replied, flipping the other SIM card in your fingers. "We had a deal."

You and Peter went way back, as far as school days and grazed knees. Your paths differed, but with an arrangement it kept both of you secure: you with money and him with the law. Peter knew that one misstep you'd have him and his minions locked away for life, blowing his fortunes into the water. That's what made your deal so sweet; you held the power. He couldn't afford to piss you off. Truth be told, you couldn't financially kiss goodbye to his contributions either, but he didn't have to know that.

"You meet me tomorrow in the park opposite The Crown and you've got it," Peter said. You hated the way his voice inflected when he was stressed. But you'd dug him out of the shit he'd found himself in and that didn't come cheap. Neither did Eileen's habits for buying your boys designer gear.

"It better be there Peter, every last cent. All it takes is one little tip off," you said, warning him. You knew he had no proof that you'd been involved in these cash-in-hand exchanges and he certainly wasn't smart enough to record your conversations. "Speaking of which…you got any names for me?" You had to keep the books ticking over at work. After all you'd made a name for yourself for your effortless drug raids – they were all in awe of how your gut feelings panned out – and someone at the top would get suspicious if you didn't have some feckless miscreant to expose as a nasty smack dealer.

"Not on the phone," Peter said, worming his way out of any responsibility.

"There's a name that keeps cropping up on my system. He's vermin. I wanna know if he's one'a yours." You paused, holding back your breath; you might finally get to put this lad away. "Steven Hay."

"Don't know him."

You laughed, the sound knocking, empty, around your car. "You must do, Peter. His name's all over the goddamn city. And I've wasted too many days trying to get him. So if you're getting rid, then you get rid of _him_. If you wanna screw him over be my guest, just let me have a piece of him."

You didn't waste a second waiting for his response, ending the call and replacing your SIM. There was a missed call and a voicemail from Eileen asking you to pick up Declan from the skate park on your way home; you weren't happy he was out this late but he was a good boy in your authoritarian shadow.

Paddy was sat at the kitchen table finishing his homework when you got in and you kissed his head first before your wife, moving your hands around her waist as she cooked. You'd learnt to fancy her. And when you couldn't, you'd think of those elicit fantasies of youth, because that - and a hard drive of porn - was all you had for that itch. Once you'd strayed. _Once_. And never again. You were stronger than that. Every day you saw the weak and the needy and the pathetic and they repulsed you. They made your skin crawl.

You pinched a few uncooked carrots from her chopping board and leant over Paddy as he worked, pointing out minor errors he'd made. The sorts of homework he was getting made you feel as if the school system was taking your little boy away and you hated it. Told Eileen as much.

"Did ya catch anyone today dad?" he asked, scrubbing the pencil eraser over his wrong answer. Paddy's idea of the law was the simplistic innocence his age brought him.

Eileen made you water down your stories with words like _bad_ and _not very nice_. So the junkie pisshead pushing crack to kids became _a nasty man_. You'd done a talk in Paddy's school once with all their little darling eyes looking up to you for inspiration. And then that afternoon your partner let off a hooker so she'd give him one without his missus finding out (you'd politely declined) and you went straight round to Peter Hamill's for a bag full cash and a pardon on his latest trafficking. Quite the model citizen.

"Almost," you said, sitting down beside your son. You wondered what the little runt Steven was up to now. The thought of having him trembling with lazy alibis and excuses in the interrogation room filled you with excitement. You wondered if he was a screamer.

You ruffled Paddy's mop of hair. "Go and beat your brother on the Xbox – I gotta have a word with your mum."

Paddy ran along and you shut the door behind him. Eileen raised her two perfectly drawn eyebrows at you. "Well?" she said, "Did you sort it?"

"The money's as good as in the bank," you said, drumming your fingers on the table. She was wearing a new skirt and not the shiny market-made type either.

"It's all over the papers you know," she said, lowering her voice as if the boys could hear over the sounds of zombies and rapid machine gun fire. "Corruption."

You shrugged. "You ain't got nothing to worry about," you said although when the headline had circulated the staff room earlier in the day you'd felt your blue collar stick. You weren't the only one, but you were the one who'd be at mercy if fingers were pointed.

"We'd lose everything, Brendan," she said, as if you had no idea what kind of punishment you'd face if you were ever exposed.

"Relax Eileen, would ya? If I say you ain't got nothing to worry about, then you ain't." You knew her trust in you wasn't the anchor it once was. She needed your physicality so you went to her and remembered once that she said she liked kisses behind her ear, so you did just that and gave her shoulders a brief squeeze. She'd stop worrying when there was a bigger sum in the bank. Eileen liked to flash the cash but she was discreet about the means it was earned and you thanked God you married her for that alone.

::: :::

Peter's son was half Paddy's age and the perfect excuse for two grown men to speak shoulder to shoulder in a park. The morning cold stung your fingers as you flicked through the notes, before tucking the envelope inside your coat.

"I'm not cheating you," Peter said, kicking the football back to his son with the side of his foot.

"I'm a copper, Peter. You expect me to take you on your word?" You gave him a toothy smile, petting his son's head as he toddled over. You were wiser than Peter: you kept Eileen and the boys safer than anything and away from all this. Not that it seemed to matter much to Peter as him and his wife could up and move address in an afternoon if they were pre-warned of a raid.

When the kid headed off, charging for the goal, you spat your gum out and turned to Peter. "So give me the story on Steven."

Peter shook his head. "Nah, I've got nothin' on him. I've got others you can take off my hands."

You leant on his shoulder, gravelly into his ear. "Maybe you're not understanding me, Peter. If you're fed up of your low-lifes, the ones jeopardising your business then you deal with them. It's not like you haven't done it before, or would you like me to remind you of the names that miraculously disappeared from the system?"

There were men who'd been on your books for years for petty crimes and who'd been brought in for questioning countless times over drug charges, who for reasons of hierarchy and control had been wiped from existence. They weren't the sort of men who the papers would describe as victims. They were gang members caught in the crossfire. They were the ants crushed by a boot.

"I. Want. Steven." You tapped the side of his face. "He's making us a laughing stock, leading us all on a merry dance just because he can. Set him up, Peter. You've got until the end of the week."

::: :::

You'd diverted to a coffee stop, a sly dig at Fisher's weight gain, when you saw him: sprinting in the opposite direction when he clocked your uniforms. He legged it from the shop, a bottle of booze smashing as he dropped it, with you hammering the pavement behind him. Jeers and shouts carried you and you shouted at Mal to investigate the shop where he'd come from as you pursued Steven.

He knew the backstreets as well as you and rat-tailed his way through them like a maze keeper, pushing bins into your path. The adrenaline made you warm and fire burned in your muscles. He threw his head back to check on you and it only made you push that bit harder to reach him.

Round the corner, straight into a blocked off crossroads. Nowhere to run. Skidding. Trapped. You couldn't contain your triumphant laughter and it echoed back to you in the dead end, before you leapt forward and pushed Steven against the corrugated garage door.

Your breath was hot on his neck. His arms hit out but you grappled them behind him, wrists gripped by your hands. He glowed warm with sweat, panting.

"I ain't done nothin'!" he cried; that blissful double negative. His snarly, bittered English accent.

You leant your chin on his shoulder, yanking his arms back so it'd pull on his shoulder. "We meet at last," you said, listening to him yelp.

"This is assault, this is!" He tried to wriggle from you, would have stamped on you if you hadn't dodged it fast enough.

You radioed over to Mal to check the shop had CCTV of the theft and the shopkeeper wanted to press charges. He'd been at the till too, so you'd found, and you couldn't contain your enjoyment as you pressed all your weight against him and cuffed him, giving him the usual spiel.

When you span him around, his forehead lined sharply and he spat in your face. Foreplay.

"Playing hard to get," you said, wiping your face and then rubbing it onto the chest of his jacket.

He looked straight at you then, as you held him by the collar. The thrill flicked up again inside and you let it linger; its old and familiar twinge that you always left unsatisfied. He had the cheekbones and the lanky cut and that surly mouth. What you could do with that mouth didn't bear thinking about when you were tight against his bony frame. His gaze glued, rebellious and aqua blue, until you pulled him roughly alongside you.

He pissed about in the back of the shop, denying everything and claiming he wanted a solicitor. You emptied his pockets for him even though Mal rolled his eyes as if to say – you'll get us in deepshit for the way you're treating him – and turned away, distancing himself, as you took to searching him for the items and cash he'd stolen. He looked at you when your hands patted down his jeans like he knew. There was a smugness about him.

Smashed bottle aside, he didn't have much besides a wade of notes and a packet of peanuts on him.

"Oh fuck me, some dry roasted. Lock me up and throw away the key!"

"You wanna watch your mouth, Steven."

His chin angled in the air. "The name's Ste."

"Not on your criminal record it ain't. And boy, have you got previous!" You wanted the timid Mrs Doherty to see the nasty little yob for what he was, to see what kind of wretch she was helping to send down.

He pouted, the little orbs of his eyes watering. "I was hungry," he said.

You groaned, pressing your hand to your forehead, seeing Mrs Doherty weaken with sympathy. You watched Steven plead with her, his lies told with the slow bat of his pretty-boy lashes. The dozy cow folded and you were forced to caution him and release him. You banned him from the shop and the stupid woman gave him a packet of crisps for free.

"Maybe next time," he said, curling tongue around his bottom lip and biting it. He opened his crisps and offered you one.

"Yeah, go on with ya," Mal said, stepping in front of you so you couldn't lunge for him.

Back in the car he grimaced at the cold coffee. "What was that all about? You and the kid."

You crunched your teeth, focusing on the drive. "Nothing." You snapped. "And don't you say anything at the station, Fisher. Otherwise I'm dumping you on someone else. You're too soft. I don't want to look like a prick."

::: :::

"Flowers," you said with a shrug. "Chocolates, I guess."

It was an early morning shift and Lynsey Nolan swivelled on the seat in front of you rolling her eyes. A different world and you might've married her instead, or cheated on your wife with her. Really, even if she was your type, she was too nice - too perky - for an extra marital affair: she wasn't worth the risk of it.

"You don't think she's going to expect something a little more special?"

You hated women and their expectations; all the unwritten rules men were meant to conform to, the unsaid things you were meant to psychically interpret.

Shaking your head you said, "Not Eileen. It's fourteen years, it's not time for the bunting and cake."

Lynsey slid over to the coffee machine. Her body did nothing for you but you looked anyway, pretending made blocking out the indifference easier. She turned back around, seeing you look and folded her arms. "Fourteen years is a long time out of a life," she said, "If it was my husband I'd want something nice for our anniversary."

You were about to comment on how you were grateful of Eileen wanting very little when there was a scuffle in the entrance of the station. You skirted out of the office door to assist if they needed it and came face to face with Steven Hay.

"You got a holding cell for this one?"

You dangled a ring of keys in front of the lad's face, your moustache tilting up at the corners when you smiled. "With pleasure."

Even earlier than the end of the week promise you had from Peter and the scally was already in your possession. You watched on as he was slung in and you talked over him - about him - like he was devoid of all sense of hearing and speech.

"What've you brought him in for this time?" you asked, leaning up against the doorframe in the cell as he was read his rights.

"Defacing property and attempted arson," your colleague said.

You tutted loudly. "Just isn't your week, boy, is it?"

Steven looked at you with a cold glare, his jaw hard and an aggression pitting in the twitches of his facial muscles. He knew saying nothing would work in his favour, but something in you missed his spirited attitude and you idly wondered whether this was all part of Peter's set up, whether he was trying to win you round with a half-settlement by leaving drugs out of the equation. If Steven had links with Peter's gang then it would work in his favour to distance Steven with a crime that couldn't be traced back to his business. Graffiti and arson was far too small time for the likes of Hamill and he wouldn't even be considered. Smart move, but it was cutting corners and that was unsatisfying. Steven would serve two years maximum after good behaviour and then he'd be straight back out on your books again.

You took a break, sitting in your squad car and risking a quick SIM change, sent a text to Peter. _This better not be your doing. Not interested in your games. Make the set up. Do it right._ You wanted Steven bogged down in possession charges and nothing less. Someone tapped on your window, causing you to jump: Lynsey.

"They want you back inside," she said.

"I'm on a break," you said, the paranoia seeping into your tone and making you aggressive.

"Just following orders."

You slid a finger under your collar to ease it and returned to the station. One of the Guards who'd brought Steven in beckoned you to one side. His fat eyes rolled. "Gobshite says he'll talk, only if _you_ interview him. What's that about?"

Shaking your head, you upturned mouth shrugged. "No idea." You'd never had what they referred to in the station as a _special request_.

He dug his elbow into your ribcage on passing, sticking his tongue into the side of the cheek. "Gotta crush on you I bet. Boys together!" His lisp drilled a hole right through your brain. Once a comment like that would have earned someone a broken jaw; these days on the right side of the law you'd drop some hardcore porn onto his laptop to break up his family. No one made a comment like that without punishment. Poor old Murph.

On your way to see him one of the serges pulled you to one side, warning you that Steven Hay might be the pawn needed to get further into one of the drug gangs and to tread carefully, urging you to get him on side. It wasn't what you wanted to hear and you tried shaking off his suggestion that Steven could easily be manipulated into your little mole. You weren't about to let the lad jeopardise your own interests, but the sergeant gave you the advantage of letting you do most of the talking off the record. And that was like an offering of a wool ball to a tiger.

When you entered the room Steven had his chin rested on his folded arms and looked up as you wrangled a chair, sitting astride it. You felt his gaze lick across your body and maybe fat old Murphy had a point after all. Or worse, maybe he'd smelt something on you that you'd buried so deep you thought it invisible and Steven was playing the vixen game of ego stroking.

"Can I go home, yet or…?" Steven asked, scrunching his nose.

"Or…? What exactly were you expecting?"

He sat back in his seat, posture open and cocky. He shrugged. "A slap on the wrist and a taxi fare home."

Your laugh curled wide into the room. "And where is home? We don't have an address for you." You scanned over his charge sheet.

"Disneyland," he said unblinking.

"You and Mickey, eh?" You tapped the pen against the desk. "You know if you give us an address you've got a better chance of being released on bail."

"So you can keep tabs on me?" He scoffed, tilting back the seat until it swayed on two legs.

You leant your head to the side watching him. In the angle of the chair his t-shirt had ridden up, exposing a width of his belly – a tattoo and a beige tuff of hair – you _almost_ didn't look for long enough.

"You said you'd talk. You asked for me," you said, open palms. Then you stood, circling around his proximity, pressing the back of his chair forward so it landed on all four feet and paced behind him. "I'm listening, so talk."

He rolled his head back, extending his throat with all its smooth skin and knot of an Adam's apple. "Is this on record?" he asked. His eyelashes beat like wings.

"Depends," you said and your hands were inexplicably on his shoulders, his head flopped back underneath. You moved away, awareness swimming back to you, knuckles absent-mindedly knocking against the two-way mirror. He wasn't a big enough threat for anyone to sit behind there today.

His lips were reddened like he'd been biting them in his nerves. Maybe he wasn't as smug as he liked portraying. "It weren't my fault," he said, eyes watching you as you skulked back and forth. "Yeah I do my graffiti and stuff but I weren't to know it was a set up was I?"

You pressed your fingertips to your head. Steven licked his lips and from a brief glance you saw a flicker of deceit there. You leant, palms flat on the desk, him doe-eyed before you picking at his fingernails.

"I'm innocent in all this, me."

::: :::

Eventually he was released on bail and Peter hadn't responded. The serge collided with you in the corridor again and asked what sort of threat the Hay boy posed on society. You stood, solid shoulders and upright back as he dismissed your "leaps in judgement" that Steven deserved a strict hand. You realised with a disdainful scoff that the serge believed in a redemption that you'd never seen evidence for; that a short spell inside would straighten Steven out. They called it reform. You called it bullshit.

Back home, armed with Steven's case notes and a bunch of forecourt flowers, you presented your wife with a card and chocolates. Like every year before it – except the year when she wouldn't speak to you and you owed her far more than mediocre gifts – she accepted them with gratitude and a smile. You knew you'd be paying for the new handbag or dress or shoes she'd wear that night - and you were certainly paying for the finest ingredients she'd knocked together for the meal she'd cooked – and they were gifts enough for fourteen years together. She scolded you for nudging some of the carefully laid placements with your case notes.

You held his new mug shot between finger and thumb.

"Kids are with me ma," you heard Eileen say. It sounded like the low chatter of a distant radio. Your leg jittered, his notes vibrating under the movement as your eyes read over the page. The corners of the photograph pinched the surface of your fingers.

"…all this needs is forty minutes baking…"

Your eyes drifted back to the photo and you remembered the rush as you chased him and having him at your mercy. You remembered the dewy silk of his skin. One little graze along his cheek to fracture that perfect smoothness.

Then you realised Eileen had been standing staring at you for a good few seconds with her hand on her hip and silent. Her eyes had glassed over, her mouth pert and quirked to the side. The hints came flooding too you: kids out, food baking for forty minutes.

"So," she said, her dress strap slipping off her shoulder.

You let the rush of the chase take you upstairs.

::: :::

You forgot about hunches and raids and arrests; he consumed you. You obsessed over the next move. Peter had gone AWOL and you heard from another contact that he'd taken the coward's side-exit and gone on holiday. Convenient. A buzzing from another told you he was sorting out a new shipment which sounded more likely than to top up his tan. Wherever he had disappeared to, he wasn't coming up with the goods to get Steven sent down. You considered planting drugs in his flat yourself but the flippant thought dissolved – too risky.

Lynsey wafted a DVD in your face. "CCTV," she said. Evidence against Steven's case. Garage footage of him buying petrol and grainy shots of his walk to the site of attempted arson.

Lynsey watched over your shoulder as you honed in on his expression as he paid.

"He still could've been forced to do it," she said, leaning forward to get a closer look.

"And what evidence have you got for that little theory? He's alone in all of this." You tossed the DVD case to one side, skipping back to the beginning. Pointing it out to her with your jabbing finger.

"He's an impressionable young kid. He's in bad crowds, practically an orphan." Her mouth drew downwards.

"Would you listen to yourself, Lyns? You sound like a goddamn psych. He's a lowlife." A lowlife whose waist was so slight he had to hitch up his jeans in one shot and tracksuit in another. No hips.

She shook her head at you, scoffing. "He's hardly a killer." She sighed, picking up her notes. "We've got a visit booked in to see him at eleven, ask him to back up his claims with some evidence."

You turned in your seat, head coiling back as you queried her. "Who put you on the case?"

She folded her arms across her, leaning in the doorway. "Fisher's not…comfortable working with you. And the serge thought Steven might respond better to someone more motherly." She shrugged.

"Fuck's sake," you said, under your breath as she left.

::: :::

He answered the door in little more than a white polo shirt, so thin you could see his skin through it. He shivered on the doorstep, hairs on his arms raised with speckled goosebumps, with eyes like bullets he rolled them. "Yeah?"

You flashed your badge at him, as if the uniform wasn't enough. "Garda Brady and this is Garda Nolan. We need to ask you some questions, can we come in?"

"'Spose," he said, kicking the door open and dodging the waterfall of post covering the mailbox and floor. The corridor thudded with heavy bass from above and a rowing couple. Steven lead you through to his unlocked room and you were thankful that the invading smells of garbage and piss didn't filter through to his flat – if you could call it that.

On the ground floor, Steven's flat comprised of a cupboard sized bathroom with signs of damp across the doorway and an open plan room with kitchenette one end and sofa plus iron-railed bed the other. One of the widows by the bed was boarded up with gaffer-taped hardboard which flapped with a strong gust, the tape peeling away from age. Steven apologised for the mess, dumping a half-eaten pot noodle in the sink and you wondered what exactly he was apologising for. The whole place was a shit hole. Lynsey made the best of it, accepting a cup of tea and a biscuit as you perched on the end of his worn sofa.

"How long you been living here, Ste?" Lynsey asked, concern in her voice.

"Only a few months," he said, running the tap. It gurgled and clunked out water. "Sorta wanted to smarten it up, you know, but not got any money." He picked up a sad plastic plant on top of the fridge. "Got this in a charity shop." He smiled.

"That's nice," Lynsey said.

"You paid for it then?" you asked, causing Lynsey to jab you in the ribs.

"I always give to charity," he said to you, petulantly. The tap gave an almighty thump and water began spraying Steven and the kitchen. Lynsey jumped up, yelping helplessly and Ste cried out, the leak soaking his face and shirt and it seeped through his hands. You pushed Lynsey and Steven out the way, getting your uniform wet in the process. You turned the stopcock off and tightened the tap fixture with your hands, before turning the water back on. It still churned with an ugly sound but the leak was no more.

"Thanks," Steven said at your side, his shirt practically clear. He looked at you with awe, face hosed damp.

"Don't mention it," you said, looking down at your wrecked uniform and then back up at him, Steven holding firm gaze as he peeled his sodden polo shirt up and over his head, exposing his petite frame.

"I might have I shirt I could lend you, my ex he –" he studied for a flicker of surprise in your stare and found it – "he was a bigger build than me."

"Just gis a towel, that'll do."

He dumped his wet top on the kitchen counter and tossed you a towel from the bathroom, only after he'd wiped it across his chest. You were going to smell him on your uniform for hours.

Lynsey thumbed over his statement while he changed and you sat back, letting her question him, her soft tactics riling you into ending the session early. He wouldn't give anything away, especially not with Lynsey's earnest pouting. He had no evidence it was a set up and his poorlittlevictim tales were no use when he wasn't prepared to give any names to you or reasons why someone would want to set him up.

Lynsey sighed back in the car. "What a place to live," she said. You could tell she was new to all this.

"I want him done for perverting the course of justice," you said, ignoring her pity and turning out of his road.

"Jesus Christ Brendan, why are you going all guns blazing at the lad? There's no malice in him, he didn't harm anyone and he probably is being pressured into all this. You heard it yourself, he's got no money. He's desperate." She took at look at your steeled gaze. "What _is_ wrong with you?"

"Back off," you said with a snarl, silencing the rest of the journey. If she'd been a little more perceptive she needn't have asked what was wrong.

You wanted him.

Have him. Get him. Take him. Nail him. Screw him. And not in terms of the law. Even if you had to use your authority, even if you had to pay or blackmail him into silence. Even if he had to be put away to stop you obsessing over him.

You couldn't go another ten years without having your hands on another man and he was the one you wanted.

::: :::

After work you drove around the city at night, picking up a bottle of whiskey. You parked up by the Great South Wall, swigging back the drink and letting it ease down your throat. You came here as a lad with the rest of the boys, Peter too, spending hours doing very little. Back then you were a mess; a walking wound of Catholic contradictions and expectations. You had cravings that didn't belong to you and urges that you could never speak of.

You knew he'd be here too. It wasn't a conscious thought when you drove, but when you arrived with walls spraypainted and his name surrounding you – you knew.

He didn't have his hood up and was wise enough not to have a can of paint in his hand. You flashed your headlights at him and he strolled over, pulling up his jeans as he did. You pressed the window down and his elbows fit snugly in its space.

"This ain't a cop car," he said.

"Well observed." You could smell lager on his breath.

"You can't arrest me, I ain't done anything." He spied the bottle of whiskey between your legs and tutted. "Drinking and driving."

You stared him down. "What are you doing wandering round here at night?"

"Could ask you the same thing," he said taking a long swig of beer from the can he held. He shook it at you. "See, drink not paint."

You smiled tightly, your gums dry from the cold.

"You do this to everyone on bail, do ya? Stalk 'em." he said, tongue peeking out between his teeth before he locked his mouth around the tin again. "Freezing tonight," he said. "Let us sit in your car for a bit?"

You didn't answer him but he responded as soon as he heard the clink of the door unlocking and climbed in beside you. He leant his head back against the headrest and looked at you, black pools of his eyes mirrored with the dim streetlamps.

"This dun't affect my case, does it?" Ste asked, sipping on the beer and blowing his hands warm. The tips of his ears were tinged pink with the cold.

You pressed your finger against your lips and shushed him. "We can't talk about it," you said, uncapping the whiskey and drinking a little.

He fiddled with the ringpull. "So if we can't talk about me…" The pauses swelled in the dark. "Or can we not talk about you either." He snorted with a little giggle. "We're not supposed to talk at all are we?"

"What do you think?"

You drummed your hands on the steering wheel in the silence, puffing out a breath. You hadn't thought this through.

"How long you been married?" Steven asked, his eyes on your wedding ring as it tapped against the wheel. You turned it with the fingers on your other hand, loosening it from its tight and warm well.

"Fourteen years," you said. The lack of remorse you felt at what you wanted to do didn't shock you. You loved Eileen but you weren't going to let this go.

He nodded, impressed. "Kids?"

"Two boys."

Ste smiled. "That's nice." He looked out the window and across the sea. You felt him growing cold on you. The silence was killing.

"You wanna go for a drive? I'll drop you home after."

"Okay."

You watched street lights shimmer along his face, the yellows and oranges. You let him toss his empty lager can onto the road and you exchanged a smile, you shaking your head. Out of the city you broke the speed limits. Curiosity got the better of him and he picked up your Garda badge from the dashboard and read over your details, repeating _Brendan_ to himself.

When you parked a street away from where he lived he didn't jump out straight away. His fingers brushed over the badge and you imagined them on your dick.

"Have you ever done anything bad?" Steven asked, curling up to the side in his seat, facing you.

"Plenty."

"Why?"

You looked at him, hands stuffed into his pockets. All coy in the darkness of the car. How easy it would be to trap him. If only the thought of getting a cold, blackmailed and compliant fuck out of him hadn't lost its appeal.

"To get what I want," you said.

He looked down at his hands, pulling at a ragged hangnail. "I've done bad things to get by," he said.

Without a word you unlocked the car and watched him slip away from you and back to his grotty flat. You sat in the car, lights off. It was gone eleven and the streets were shrouded in sleep. You thought about what you'd be doing if you weren't here. You pictured the journey home and the porch light left on for you and the kids tucked up in bed but alert enough of your coming home to stay awake a little to kiss you goodnight. You'd eat the sandwich left on the side for you and flick through the TV channels until Eileen came downstairs – satin gown – and try to lure you into bed. You'd have to masturbate to get anywhere with her and blame it on tiredness and you'd feel the resentment that she wouldn't go on all fours and how she'd be appalled once at your suggestion of anal. Maybe you'd get lucky and she'd suck you off so you could pretend she was someone else. Someone rougher and blonder and dirtier. A man. A lately, a very specific one.

You keyed her a text to say you were stuck at work and then swapped SIMs. Still nothing from Peter but you text him anyway. _Abort Hay set up. Not worth hassle._

Your conscience felt a little clearer. But then you had his case notes open and you were saving Steven's number into your phone. You walked to his address, the pace frightening you. You dialled his number and waited in the corridor outside his flat in the dark. He'd locked the door and it took two attempts for him to pick up. He'd been in the shower; you heard the pipes creaking in the building.

He was breathless when he answered the phone. You felt his nervy response as you remained silent on the other end.

"Tell me you want me," you said finally, breathing into the phone. "Please."

He could hear you through the door, so he opened it wearing just a towel around his bony hips. You gravitated towards him and the light from his flat. The grime and the dirt stopped repulsing you, you felt like you belonged in its squalor. You backed him into the room and slammed the door shut behind you, the jolt making him jump. The flicker of fear in his eyes, the history of being in the shadow of bigger and more powerful men, dispersed and he took your desperation to his advantage. His fingers curled into the join of the towel and he pulled it apart, throwing it to the ground and stepping naked over it.

He moved forward, beginning to unbutton your uniform until you stopped him; both hands around his wrists like a pair of cuffs. You twisted him back and held them above his head against the wall. The strike of his body against the wall projected a groan from him, caught by the dive of your mouth against his. He pulsed at your mercy, mouth slack and pliable, tasting of sour lager. His wrists wound lose in your grip, tongue inside his mouth, charging the kiss into some deeper and more vicious. Your teeth cradled his lower lip until his soft murmurs made you bite the rump of it and free up a hand to loop his leg around you. You could never handle a woman like this; you could never want to.

You let him free to claw your spine, his groin rubbing against yours with him pulling your clothes apart. Your nails grazed through his hair when you kissed him again, difficult angles - barely concerned how long they lasted - just longing for the sensations the pleasure brought. He'd worked your shirt undone and it was a blur of blue when it fell from you. He tugged at your trousers, but you had spun him around the room and onto the bed, affording him the time to elbow his way up to the top.

You watched his chest rise and fall with each rasped breath, colour whipping through his skin, smooth from the shower. You felt apologetic for your hands calloused by age and work as they took possession of his hips, dragging him across the white sheets and rolling him onto his front. He eased and arched as you approached him, taking your tongue up the hot path of his arse. You coiled in its crevice, making him squirm. You paddled your tongue flat against his hole and licked and groaned your way into him. The cries and curses fell from his lips like a prisoner's pleas for his life back.

You took greedy, uninhibited mouthfuls of him, your thumbs leaving white track-marks on the cheeks of his behind where you opened him up. Steven could never been accused of shyness; he beat himself off to the workings of your tongue, groaning for more from you. The sting of your spank across his backside chided him and he spurted with mischievous giggles. You stopped them by throwing him onto his back and crushing your mouth onto his.

When you took down your trousers and underwear, never breaking eye contact, he held his knees spread and his tongue licked under his top teeth. His dick glistened with precum as he watched you.

"Condoms?" you asked. You wet the head of your thumb in his mouth and dragged it across his hole, a brief stretching taster.

He cocked his head to the side, indicating a cabinet with its handle sellotaped on. When you yanked it open the handle clattered to the floor which you ignored, grabbing lube and a condom. Steven had his knuckle suckled in his mouth when you mounted him again and his eyelids fluttered girlishly.

"Where do you want me?" he asked, stretching out across the sheets.

"On your front; on your knees."

His mouth sneaked a smile as he fulfilled the request, turning his head back and lips pink. "You don't have to be gentle with me, you know."

He'd mistaken your caress of his spine as a sign of your plans. "I got no intentions to be," you said, low in his ear.

His breathy gasp took you by surprise when you first entered him, the muscles of his thighs clenching and his fingers twisting into the sheets. You thrust inside him with unbridled authority, stroking his body with all the tenderness of a man used to cradling a woman. His spine arched like a python with you grunting into him, his arms spread like wings underneath and palms flat to the bed. His cries choked through him and you heard a banging from upstairs aiming to shut him up at the late hour.

Steven's unabashed vocal yearns for what he wanted from you spurred you with the primal urges you'd abstained from in so long. Your groans no longer lingered in your gut, you released them with every fuck of your hips and with it Steven buckled with pleasure, falling at the knees. You caught him around the waist, pressing mouth and tongue against his shoulder, branding him with your teeth. Finally, he belonged to you. The drag of his muscles around you tightened you to climax and you hurled the last dregs of your energy into making him every last bit of your quivering fantasy. Steven, spent and naked and submissive – the stuff of forbidden dreams.

When he laid out flat on his back and you'd binned the condom, you sat on the opposite end of the bed and told him to masturbate. He obliged: like your own private show. And your last thought before sleep was wondering what else he'd do for you.

::: :::

He looked so young in the cold light of the morning, his lips pinker – fuller -, eyes wide and dopey with innocence. His body, warm and heavy with the smell of sex, lazed naked under the scratchy cotton, watching you find your socks and shoes and scroll through the barrage of missed calls. _Eileen. Eileen. Eileen. Eileen._

He knelt up behind where you sat on the bed, sheet losing its place to fall under his knees, running his tongue up from the first knot of your spine. The room clung stale with the rising damp and the wallpaper curling at the edges. The waking estate outside cut through the tender sounds of his breathing, its speeding cars and heavy bass stereos from the flats above. You felt Steven's erection against your back as his hands moved to your lap, coaxing you back into bed. His bony arms, dotted with a stray mole, worked around you, his hands reviving you root to tip. Your eyes stuttered closed and you let his hands roam without punishment or permission.

The phone in your hand began ringing again and you lurched forward out of bed, pressing your finger over your lips, silencing Steven. There was a sharp warning in your eyes.

"Hey sweetheart," you said, feeling heat racing around your body, colouring your cheeks. You hobbled barefoot to the kitchen quarter, leaning with trepidation against one of the grimy worktops. You wished you'd made an effort to dress.

"Where the hell are ya?" Eileen said. The kids were around in the background, her voice a strangled whisper. "I've been worried sick."

"Just work stuff, you know how it is," you said, watching in the distance as Steven took himself out of bed. Framed by the light and the white sheets, he looked deceptively angelic.

"Well I phoned the station and they said you weren't there." You could feel her trust in you had diminished with every missed call. She'd been like this only once before, when you were home late from work. She'd never been the nagging sort until you gave her an STI that you'd picked up from the only one-night stand you'd allowed yourself in your fourteen years of marriage. You'd been weak and careless and he'd been average and disappointing. She'd never forgiven you or the _bitch_ she thought you'd been with.

"Yeah and I wasn't. I went to interview some little rat, you know. And then I had to go and take care of some other business. The sort that gets you those designer little numbers, you hear me?"

Steven fetched himself a glass of water, sliding against you – body on body – and the tap clunked until it was spitting water. He examined the cloudy water and then glugged it back and spinning the empty glass into the sink, lips still wet.

"If I find out you're lying, then that's it Brendan, we're finished," she said, the sound of the door clicking as she shut herself away from the boys.

"I swear to God, Eileen. I'd never do that to you again," you said, watching Steven wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. He trailed his fingers over your chest and latched his tongue over your nipple, sucking soundlessly. Your jaw jut out in frustration and you tried worming away from the boy, but he took to his knees in front of you leaving you helpless as his lips fluttered your thighs.

"I love you, Eileen. You're my world. You know that." You had Steven's hair gripped in scissoring fingers, palm digging in with a little pressure. His tongue rimmed a circular loop around the head of your cock.

Her words drained out of your system with your eyes closed and your teeth bricking together.

"Everything I do is for you; you're my girl," you said, Steven looking up at you with big pupil-shot eyes and tongue creaming saliva across your slit.

"I know," she said on the other end. Her weary sigh said it all. "And I love you too. Come home soon, will ya?"

You mumbled an affirmative, ending the call and slamming a long _Fuck!_ from your lungs. Steven's eyes shone with satisfaction. You threw the phone across the room until it landed on the decrepit sofa and gripped the back of his head with both hands. His hands levered clammy around the backs of your thighs and he whimpered, breaths spurting short as the speed overwhelmed him. You took his hand and placed it under your balls so he could lavish the attention that you craved. You appreciated his rough skill, the way he choked back the gag-reflex to suck you right at the back of his throat and tongued you with sated humming sounds.

You held him firmly when you came, hammering him with a few final thrusts so his throat couldn't escape you. With his hair balled in your hand and back slumped against the kitchen counter, you groaned, his lips dribbling with cum. He took great enjoyment of resting back and finishing you up.

His lashes made him look like a doll, lips shiny and blown, skin silky. He held your dick like it was his possession.

"I'm your biggest fantasy, aren't I?" he said, touching his reddened lips as they turned into a smirk. "Your wife and kids at home and then there's me. A little criminal you can get your hands all over. You can show a bad boy like me how powerful you really are." He licked the full straight length of your cock and then his lips. "And I'll do everything your wife won't."

The little scally took pride in this, just like he saw each crime as an achievement. But you'd be lying if you said his brazen lack of shame didn't excite you in all the right ways. You were thrill seekers in your own worlds.

"Don't talk about her," you said, warning him. He rose to his feet and apologised sulkily. His primal instincts were drowned loud but the social niceties left a lot to be desired. He looked away but you snapped back his gaze with your hand around his chin. "Now get back on the bed," you said, "I ain't done with you yet." Mischief spread his lips and he followed your every order.

::: :::

When you arrived home, Eileen was out shopping and you took the opportunity to shower. Cold. As you left Steven, there had been an unsaid agreement that your hook-up wasn't just a one off steeped in blackmail and your power games – even if you'd dangled that prospect – but for the simple fact of wanting each other.

You'd still not heard from Peter and with one day until your deadline, he made you nervous. Sitting on the steps of your back garden you called him, leaving him a voicemail.

"Peter, it's me. What's with the silent treatment? Do you know the kind of shit I could get you in?! You better call me back. I don't want you loading that kid full of your shit, do you hear me? You leave him out of your plans and we'll sort out his arson mess. Got that?"

You knew the attempted arson was all Steven's doing now, he's said as much that morning in bed.

"You know it's all my fault, don't you?" he'd said, snug against your chest. "I weren't set up."

"Lying is gonna give you a longer sentence," you told him.

Steven climbed on top then, your hands fitting his arse. "So," he said with a shrug. "Gonna get sent down anyway."

He'd started gyrating his hips against you and his blasé attitude started to make you realise you didn't want him locked up and out of your periphery at all.

"My lawyer thinks I done it."

"You did."

He grinned. "I know."

He ran his hands across your arms, squeezing and appreciating the muscles and then returned his attention to your cock, groping it together with his.

"I was just tryin'a teach this old prick a lesson. He wouldn't rent me a flat, so I thought I'd burn down some of his shit property." Steven said pausing to moan like a yawn, jerking you in his hand and say _in sotto_, "Oh you like that?"

He swallowed and licked and enjoyed you like Eileen never had.

When you ended the call from Peter, a text came through and you smiled to yourself. The dirty lad had taken a self-portrait of his cock and was expecting some sort of repeat performance during the weekend. You deleted and thought about a reply when Eileen came clattering in, back from the shops. You laid on thick the stories of your alternate business and how it paid her credit cards and then per her request made the most of an empty house and the afternoon off.

::: :::

Friday arrived and you were sat yawning at your desk in the station at six in the morning when Peter rang you on your normal mobile. You'd spent the night at the docks, fucking Steven in your car and telling Eileen you were at the station interviewing witnesses. She'd frowned at the ungodly hours they were making you work, but you kissed her long and hard before you left and ate her cooked meal before putting on your uniform.

The benefits of being a Guard meant you knew where you wouldn't get caught with him; you knew where was too remote and unchartered. You liked that there'd be no one around to hear his screams and hissed of pleasure.

"How did you get this number?" you asked, heading to the toilet stalls and out of the main bustle.

"Not important," he said.

"Where the fuck have you been, I've been calling."

You made him call back on the other mobile and you went for a walk, a fridge empty of milk being a nice excuse.

"I've been sorting shipments," Peter explained eventually. "I've been busy."

"So you need us out the way."

"And I've been thinking about the boy. Problem solving," Peter said, his voice making the hairs on your neck said. You'd heard that tone before.

"Whatever you're planning, I don't care, just don't."

Peter scoffed on the other end. "No one'll miss him. I'm doing you's all a favour."

_I'll miss him_ – were the words that sprung to mind, but you held back, rubbing your hand over your face and making a detour to a quieter street where you loitered in an alleyway.

"It solves a lot of problems for me. Nice set up, you can take the fella who's doing the hit for me. He's a bastard and I want rid. Little Steven's just cannon fodder."

"No." You snapped, teeth gritting and going right through you. "You sort the fella out yourself, leave Steven out of it, Peter."

He tutted. "You gone soft! What's he been doing? Sucking you off as parta his bail agreement?!" Peter laughed, taking your silence and your denial as proof. "He has! The little git's been cock sucking his way outta jail." His laughter dried up and you could hear him wipe the tears from his eyes. "You know we all knew you were a poof back in school."

"Thefuck did you just say?!" Your voice became a snarl as you hunched over the phone. "One word Peter, you'll go down for life Peter, you fucking keep your lies to yourself, you hear me?!"

"You take me for an idiot Brady. You think I haven't been making sure you can't screw me over?" You'd never heard him be so calculating; so cold. You didn't know he had it in him. "You know what they do to coppers inside?"

"Give me an alternative."

"Immunity."

"Done. It's done."

"-and a hundred grand. For the trouble."

Sweat prickled your forehead. "Where am I supposed to get that sort of cash from?"

"Not my problem, Brady. You get the cash for me in the next twelve hours and I'll make sure I don't run my mouth off down the station." You gripped the phone as if it was Peter's neck.

You didn't give work a second thought as you drove straight round to Steven's flat and hammered on the door. He answered it dozily in just a t-shirt and underwear and his desire flared immediately.

"Hello…" he said, reaching out to pull you into his flat. You pushed him aside and strode right in. He tutted, closing the door behind you. "Alright," he said, put out.

You paced, trying to make sense of the plan you'd hatched – all rough at the edges – on the journey there. He stood back stunned as you routed around in his bedside drawers. "You need to pack a bag. Someone's out to get you." Steven stared, blinking as he stuttered trying to make sense of your mashed words. "Peter Hamill. You know the guy?" He nodded. "One of his cronies."

Steven smirked a little like you were teasing, not fully comprehending the etchings of stress through lines around your eyes.

"Pete wouldn't-"

"He would. He will and he has." You braced your palms on his shoulders. "You should never have got involved with him!"

He flipped back at your change of tone, tossing your grip away. "How else am I meant to pay my rent, right? When I've got your lot on my back too?!"

"It's just excuses," you said snapping back at him. Seeing the rage colour in his face you wished you hadn't begun to challenge him.

His head shook, mouth open in disbelief. "How can you say that? You've got a cushy job - a nice house I'll bet - a wife and two kids and me here on tap for your sordid little shags! You ain't got a clue."

You hurled Steven's poxy charity shop plant at the wall until its base smashed. "Peter's got a hit on you and I'm about to spend a life prison, so pack a fucking bag and get in the car."

As you sat in the car waiting for him, you turned off the radios from the station and called the bank, querying your savings. Even with a loan you'd be short. You name dropped, you spoke to the manager about your profession and even he said it would take three weeks to re-mortgage and raise that kind of cash.

When you hung up you bashed the phone against the dashboard, the car shaking as you shouted. Steven appeared and attempted to open the passenger door, but you nudged back with your head so he sat behind you, sulking.

"So I'm your criminal now in the back of the cop car, am I?"

You tilted the mirror so you could see him. His eyes were pink from crying.

"It looks less suspicious this way," you said. You looked at his drawn face turned to the window. "If I didn't care about you I wouldn't be here." For a moment you rested your head on the steering wheel, before heading to the boot of the car and passing Steven a jacket.

"What's this?"

"Bullet proof vest," you said, shifting in your seat to look at him as you spoke. "Put it on."

His face constricted with fear and he pulled it on, zipping a hoodie up over it to hide it, realising how serious you were. "What now?" he said, fighting the way his bottom lip trembled as you drove away from the flat, the one which had started to feel like home, that he'd never see again.

Your eyes closed for a moment as you stopped in traffic. He looked to you with such trust and dependence and what did you have to offer him when everything was falling apart? You were looking at a life sentence and he was dodging bullets.

You voice came out all strangled and quiet as you hesitated over you reply. "I'm taking you to my house – I'll come up with something – but you need lie low there just for a few hours and then I'll get you out. Portugal, Spain – I hear the weather's nice – wherever you fancy."

"To your house?" His eyes widened. "I have to leave Dublin? Leave the country?"

You slammed your hands on the steering wheel and cursed at the driver in front. "You're safer! Okay? Trust me."

He played with his lip, elbow on the window. "What about you? You said prison?"

"I'm still working on it."

::: :::

"In my house?" she said, hands on her hips. "You want me to hide a criminal in my house?"

You stood, hand over your forehead in the kitchen, with Steven in the parked car outside waiting. "We're talking hours, Eileen, hours. Then he'll be out of here."

She grimaced. "What's it got to do with you anyway?"

"Peter's out to get him, alright? And things have escalated. I'm sorting it. Steven will stay in the house for a few hours max. You can make him wash up or something." You tried laughing but it sounded raspy and you made yourself sick with how easy it was to lie to her again. "He's just a kid, eighteen – he ain't got anyone. I can't walk away from this and know he died on my watch."

"Surely at the station they can do something?"

"Not this," you said. "You know how involved I am with it all, they'll smell a rat."

Eileen's eyes closed for a moment as she sighed. She held your face in her hands. "I know you feel you have to look after everyone but don't you go giving him the impression he can move in and you'll be a father to him. Alright?"

Your teeth fixed in a tight smile. "I won't."

Back outside you pulled the door of the back seats and arched over the opening. So desperately you wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, reassure him.

"I won't say anything to your wife," Steven said. "I'm not that stupid."

"Good," you said, checking behind you. With no one watching through the curtains you stroked his hair off his forehead. "I'd kiss you now, if things were different."

His mouth drooped, surly. "Well they're not. You're about to dump me in your house with your wife and I have to pretend I'm not falling in love with you."

As his words reached your ears you gulped, taking a step back as his sports bag pushed past you and he shuffled into your porch, giving Eileen a curt hello. You wished he was softer and politer and not covered in bite marks from your mouth. She'd already seen one on his neck below the surface of his hoodie and given you a look over his head to say, _What kind of animal have you brought into my living room?_

You kissed her cheek; squeezed his shoulder.

"It'll be okay," you said to him. "Don't leave the house."

::: :::

At the station, the serge's face steamed with fury as you attempted to layer on a further lie. The benefits of having a family meant they created the perfect excuse for urgent disappearances. With him satisfied you used your hidden SIM to text Peter.

_Cash sorted. I'll be at the docks at midnight. You know the place. Don't fuck this up._

And then before swapping the SIMs back you texted Steven and pressed send before you could think about it too much.

_I love you too_.

::: :::

Lynsey had called in sick and with a man down you were intrusted dealing with Steven's case alone.

It didn't take you long: a shredder and knowledge of the computer system. Too many people trusted you with secure passwords and you'd never understood why erasing records was so easily done through the system.

- - - - _DELETE SYSTEM RECORD 'STEVEN HAY'? THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE. DELETE/CANCEL_

DELETE.

The guys in IT never questioned a system record delete, it was too drastic to be done in accident or error.

You took the evidence bags out with the trash; flirted with Sian on reception.

::: :::

He was sat alone in the dark of the living room with the telly on when you got home early. You'd left an address at the front desk with a hunch, a query – one you suggested they followed up that evening. When they got to Peter Hamill his luck would run dry and you wouldn't be there to save him. This time he'd drag your name down with him.

It made your heart catch when you saw Steven comfy in your home. His head lifted when you entered, uncurling his feet from the sofa and stopped chewing his sleeve.

"What are you doing in the dark?" you asked, stepping into the room as he turned off the TV.

"Scared. Thought it'd be safer in the dark."

His irrationality made you smile softly. You glanced around the quiet house. "Where're Eileen and the kids?"

"She took them bowling," he said, rising to his feet. "Think she found it uncomfortable with me 'ere. I don't think she wanted me influencing the boys." You thought he'd roll his eyes but he just shook his head, brows flashing. "How'd you think I felt?!"

The distance between you dissolved as your lips met his; his shadow covering your face. Your mouths clicked with the slow force and you broke with your forehead pressed against his. He was smiling when you opened your eyes and you didn't need to ask why.

From your pocket you presented him with a forged Irish passport. One you'd confiscated and doctored. You kept another in your trousers still.

"We gotta be out of here by tonight before all hell breaks loose. Peter's got enough dirt on me to send me down for good and, well, _this,_ is enough to keep me in there until I'm seventy." You stepped back from him, watched him look up from the passport.

"We?"

"Where do you fancy?"

::: :::

You had one packed bag in the boot and Steven sitting in the passenger seat when Eileen pulled up into the drive, kids in tow. Forcing yourself to gulp down the bile, the nerves and the guilt you walked straight over, greeting them like any other evening. Declan had thrashed them all and Paddy had managed a strike.

If you left now you'd never see them grow up.

If you stayed they'd only see you behind bars. Every lie you'd ever told playing out in technicolour before them. The truth would destroy them.

Eileen glanced over to the car, nodded to Steven in the car. "He going?" she asked, handing Declan the front door key so he could let himself and Paddy in. You watched them disappear into the house.

"Talking him to a safe house outside of Dublin," you said, barely keeping her eye contact.

"You're not in any trouble are you?"

You smiled, kissing her forehead. "Don't worry about me."

Her eyes flicked up; she'd had a lifetime of worrying about you. "You want me to wait up?"

You shook your head. "It's gonna take a while."

"Drive safe." She reached up to kiss the corner of your mouth and headed inside in the opposite direction.

Steven sat, head propped up on his arm when you returned to the car. He didn't ask about that final moment with your family because he could see the pain of sacrifice in your eyes. "Ready?"

He nodded. "I think Spain'd be nice."

It wasn't until you'd landed in another country that he realised he'd left his mobile phone on your living room sofa, an accidental ticking time bomb. He'd not thought to delete your messages and they'd been found.

Eileen read, reread and erased them before your plane had even landed. She'd pieced together the evidence of your betrayal for her eyes alone. Your corruption would make the headlines for weeks without the final scandal ever being uncovered. Your story and the boy's, the one who was missing all trace from the system, would become the new folklore.


	6. The Rebel

_Summary: It's 2068. After a one night stand with gorgeous protester, Ste hay, Brendan Brady's life changes overnight and he expects never to see the captivating boy again. Simon walker - politician and owner of a drugs corporation - overthrows the government after a nuclear fallout, with Brendan as his right hand man. Walker's attempts to dictate take the form of widespread drugging - suppressing emotions of love - and disobedience (staff included) comes at a price: death. Dissenters take placebos to get by and Ste is dragged into the rebellion, fighting for a freedom to love. Everything falls into place when the man he couldn't stop thinking of appears behind enemy lines. _

_::_

_A/N: A very different story from me but I hope you go with it and I hope you like it. As promised, a happy ending (hooray). I'll be interested to hear your thoughts. I'm so pleased you've enjoyed the series so far. _

_::_

* * *

**The Rebel**

He's an all legs and arms sorta guy. The type with a waist so slight you could wrap your tongue around, he thinks. He has a fringe, one that Brendan can imagine him sweeping out of his eyes – a blue that's as deadly as it is beautiful – when his sulky mouth twists at a response he doesn't like. It makes him look boyish, like he's too young to be standing up for his rights in a rally he can't be old enough to understand. But there's a fire in him – it animates his face and makes his arms flail around and Brendan takes his objections and questions with a smug little quirk on his lips. Steven's his name; Brendan likes the way his teeth have to touch his bottom lip to say it, to reject the boy's hashed together ideals.

Brendan won't let it put him off, in fact Steven's naivety is clumsy and refreshing in a world of stuffy government offices and doctrines that bore him. He thinks the boy has a point buried deep somewhere and he uses this, sly and charming, after protest's tide has left a string of litter and half-crushed beliefs. Steven hangs around with the last word and a dreamy flirtation in his eyes. He rests on his elbow, bottom lip ajar like you could just slip a tongue inside.

Brendan tells him he's full of delusions; he needs to watch the news, read some books. Ste tells him he acts from his heart; he knows what's right. He shakes his fringe off and Brendan's just _there_, flicking it away with over-worked fingertips.

"Protest's over, boy. Ain't it past your bedtime?"

His little rebel blinks and steps apart from the glass podium where he leans and leers. It's stopped being about politics; that ended when his lashes started flickering black.

Time feels so fragile these days; there's a doom that lingers in it. Tomorrow has stopped becoming a certainty and generations have adopted a new lifestyle because of it. The media calls the young 'the NOWs'. Everything revolves around immediacy and today. Consequence is a thing of the past. Faith in nature stopped the day winters and summers blurred into twelve months of the same grey and acid rain. And when war seemed like an ever present threat, in cities and towns where wars of terror never touched in the decades before; all faith in security hinged on a glass-like seesaw.

Ste's no different: he's seen the war coming, his friends wiser and political have told him so. So the gob on him has a use and he likes riots because he likes fire and danger and giving authority the middle finger. He knows little about the things he's opposing, but he takes the words of those around him and assimilates them into his own dialogue because you can't start a fight just with fists anymore. And that's one of the reasons attending university became compulsory for certain cities, his being one of them, because fists were all they had.

He's in the university theatre hall - the demo's over - and the opposition's deputy has a line of stubble like gravel connecting a moustache above his lip. Ste's had a thing about this guy ever since he remembers seeing him on the TV – on the news – when he'd been waiting for a better programme to start. Josh hates him, _loathes_ him – perhaps even more than he loathes Simon Walker – and predictably that means Ste doesn't. He spends too long in Josh's shadow so when the opportunity rises for a difference in opinion, Ste seizes it.

He wonders if Brendan Brady's like this with other protestors, but he won't buy into a conspiracy that Brendan's after more than just a night on top of him. Josh would be all over that theory; there'd be a blog in it. The student bedsit reeked of Josh's conspiracies as it was and Ste knew Josh would only call him weak if he found out. If anyone was looking for motive, for a shag with purpose, they'd point the finger in Ste's direction: he's the one backed by a mission to get Walker's group out of power – Brendan included – and he's the one who so smugly has Brendan's eyes pooling with lust in front of him. But it isn't about that; Ste doesn't care enough about winning the fight on rights. He wants to get laid. And the fact it's the brooding guy off the TV with the power and the suit and the chest as broad as a brute, makes it all the better.

Ste does that thing that other boys like in him, when he gets a chance to meet any outside of the protests and meetings Josh pulls him into. His eyes roll upwards and sink softly under his lashes. He's inches away from Brendan now. "Depends -" Ste says.

His jaw's like a knife edge. Brendan guesses he was born in a city where rationing was trialled (by a government ousted some fifteen years ago, when this one was starting school).

"-on whether you're taking me to bed." Ste finishes his sentence with his shiny tongue sitting behind his open lips.

Brendan's head circles to the side, studying him like a catch to be slaughtered. His smile hums out of his nose; so much for him and Walker's party being the elitist scum screwing up the country.

There's a fight in the first kiss. It has a battle's strength and violence; Ste's span off the heels of his feet and a moan claws out of him. He's mistaken Brendan's sullen quiet on the TV for a grizzly softness, but the roughness of him overwhelms Ste and he has to step back just to breathe. Brendan handles Ste's face with both hands. He likes the way Ste shakes him off for another kiss; this time Ste's hands rake his chest, tongue fusing with his.

They enter the tower block via the fire escape; their little secret. He watches Ste fling himself nimbly over a bolted gate to gain access and he wonders why he's travelled this distance, scrambled through covered exits and dodged a building full of students just to get his leg over. But when Steven presents himself, naked bar the lick of red warpaint make-up on his cheek from the protest, he realises it's worth it.

Steven only has a single bed, squashed into half a room. The rest is occupied by a lad whose walls are swathed in political posters with slogans about freedom and duty and rebellion. The bed's unmade and he's out with the rest of the protest, aside from Steven who's kneeling astride Brendan. His thighs prickle against Brendan's suit trousers. They're an even duller grey against Ste's skin which has come alive with golden pale.

There's not much talking as Brendan's hands skim the surface of Ste's spine; kissing occupies much of their mouths' work. Steven thumbs himself hard and writhes against Brendan's single digit that circles a dimple on the base of his back. Brendan's shirt is too expensive to be disposed of on a grotty flat floor, but it ends up there anyway along with a bundle of unposted flyers calling for support to end Walker's proposals. Everyone knows the man will end up in power, it's just a matter of when.

He's got a taste for Steven's dirty mouthed yearnings and even more so when the lad takes one long look at his cock and satisfaction rings in his pulse. Their bodies bounce a little with an unsteady rhythm as they take unfamiliar handfuls of each other. Ste presses Brendan's head against his chest and his mouth blossoms open with the sandpaper scratch of stubble.

The next moves evolve into a power struggle until Brendan catches a hooked finger inside Ste and shuts him up.

"How aboutcha give me what I came for and save the heavy petting for the girls?" Brendan watches Steven's eyes slick black and he's a little harder with his finger then, wanting a reaction.

"Proper charmer you are," Ste says. But then all resolve and tension disappears when he nods up his chin and it grazes the length of Brendan's dick. He's wriggled his way down there quickly. It unnerves him the way Brendan props up to watch him but he always plays better to an audience – it's why he's given a leading role in a protests: he's mouthy.

Brendan's thick and full. His noises charge the room like an animal's threat and Ste isn't sure that he's warred with a politician as feral as this. But then he's never had one in his bed before. They always seem so prim and straight laced, as if they're all born from the same grey-boxed factory. Brendan has him by the scruff of the neck, growling things through his teeth like _Go on, take it._ He isn't like the rest.

His balls ache like hell and Steven isn't helping. It's not a bad thing that he's stopped, because he's a step ahead and throwing a wad of condoms onto Brendan's chest. Before he can concentrate enough to open one, Steven's there, rolling it on and he's got two fingers behind rubbing himself a little looser. Brendan's rakish when he smiles and pulls Ste's hips forward. He'd happily drive the boy into the mattress but Steven doesn't look the sort to short-change him out of a good ride. Under Brendan's hands, Steven's thighs are more muscular than they looked on first glance.

There's a sharpness to his cries, like someone's stealing the last breath from him. But he didn't lie when he fought to be on top; his hips move with such aching flexibility that he was right to insist. Brendan doesn't even acknowledge it as a failure – how can it be considered as letting Steven win when it feels so good? Brendan's mouth dries up all sense of clarity and all he can see through dozy-lidded eyes is this slender body jerking and jolting with his head throw back and throat throbbing with sounds of pleasure.

Ste doesn't have much fight left in him; his body rolls with heat. It becomes a fraught, selfish fight to come and Brendan's hands are all over him, smearing fingerprints over his dick. When Ste comes it's bliss. A messy riot. Someone next door bangs through the paper thin walls. Ste likes that and screams a little louder. Brendan catches his body's slump and stretches him out so every last upward thrust drives hard into his prostate.

All Brendan can hear when he licks the cum off Ste's torso, is his panting. It's enough to make him flush and run a sour tongue across Ste's bottom lip. It's intimate the way Ste uncurls his tongue and lets it play against Brendan's. And he's on his back now; he wants it to go on all night. With that look in Brendan's eyes he thinks it might.

Brendan thumbs the lobe of his ear, his hair line. They don't push the talk onto anything serious but it doesn't take much for Brendan to learn that Ste got dragged into politics – like he suspected – without much inclination. He's got dirty cartoons and a movie poster above his bed.

Brendan's not sure how he got to be so bogged down in government either; once he was just a CEO of a drugs company. Then Walker happened and he couldn't escape the whirlwind of his ambitions.

There's a stickiness to their skin when they part and Ste feels his body cooling by the second. He's received a noisy voicetext from Josh to say he'd be back in an hour and to leave the door unlocked, so Brendan takes this as his cue to leave. There's an unspoken shift in the air; they'll do this again. Steven's thighs and neck are branded with plumy bruising from teeth and mouth; and that handprint won't last forever, but the feeling just might. Politicians like Brendan are allowed to fuck whoever they want, free of consequence (that law passed in 2051) so it's only Ste who has to make excuses as to why he can only leave by the fire escape. Sleeping with the enemy could get him kicked out of the backlash movement.

Brendan smudges the lingering protest make up from Ste's cheek. It's a line of red that makes his face look sliced. It only adds to the vulnerability as he kisses him goodbye, Ste in nothing but a campus t-shirt that hollows around his naked backside. He wants him still; he thinks he'll continue to want him until the next time.

Except, the next time they meet is a year later and the world is a very different place.

:::

The country doesn't learn about the biological effects of Tocinemine (it suppresses hormones in the brain) until long after Walker's regime is crushed, but the social implications have started just four months into his ascent into power. Wives leave husbands and children, friendships break, pet shops close, relationships dissolve and Walker is left with an army, united in their inability to love. Without love comes ruthlessness; individuals will sacrifice anything if there's nothing to attach them to anyone else. And with careful deployment of officials, censorship and subliminal propaganda his world can be exactly the way he wants to craft it.

It's in the water. Tocinemine is drunk, bathed in, swam in.

But Walker's paranoia, the level of which is excruciating enough to lead him down this path, means he's not satisfied by the levels of dedication shown to him.

"Tochinemine's different," Brendan says, hands slammed on the desk of the boardroom. It's been cleared out of all the old government officials, ones that weren't killed in the nuclear fall-out anyway. Brendan sits with Walker and a string of men weak enough to agree to his every word. "We could put that in the water – no problem. It tastes of nothing." Brendan drains his glass just to prove a point. He's not sure he can tell the difference these days anyway – he wasn't in love and has no family to speak of.

Walker doesn't either, any longer, not since his brother's machines were switched off by the last government due to cutbacks. Patients in comas of any sort, or those without basic mental functions were seen as a drain on society and resources. They were terminated immediately without the consent of families. Walker would never be over the pain that love for his brother caused him. And if you can't wipe out pain, you end the thing that caused it in the first place: love.

"But what you're asking -" Brendan continues, throwing the paperwork across the desk. "- is going to be noticed by someone. We've trialled the drug. Everyone could taste it in the food. Even the minimum dosage. You'd have to cut out everyone's tongue before you could go ahead with this."

Walker looks at him with a shivering curiosity. He smiles as if to say: _And?_

He presses long bony fingers together and sucks in his lips – thinking. "Let's jazz it up then. Make it sound like something to reduce the effects of the radiation. They're all on compulsory vitamin D as it is, one more pill to swallow is no hardship."

Before Walker had political ambitions, his drug company had dominated the market and gave people reasons to believe they weren't medicating enough. They scared people into more and more pill popping. As society fell around them, Walker Corp was there with a sugar-coated capsule to ease an ailment they didn't know they had.

There's no time to make a case against the drug anymore: those days have long since passed since Walker decided on the route. He tried. He still tries. In subtler ways.

"How are you going to enforce it?" Brendan asks. Walker's already standing to leave, signalling the meeting's finished. "There are groups already purifying the water-"

Walker smoothes back his hair with both hands. "We'll do drug trials. No getting out of that one." He pats Brendan on the shoulder as he passes and in the glass wall's reflection Brendan looks as weak and passive as he feels. "Just look at it this way, Brendan. Once this one's in their system we won't have to worry about silly little dissenters spoiling our fun. And I know it was all part of your job a few years ago to suss out who was rallying against us and appease their little protests. But now I'm in charge I'm just going to crush them instead."

His voice chimes with coldness even as he leaves and Brendan sits alone as the rest of the meeting room attendees slope away. As much as Walker likes to block it out, there's a rebellion brewing out there and it has been for the years preceding his control. He's unpopular, to put it mildly. And that's what the new drugs about – wiping out their suspicions and dislike of him, making them docile instead. Malleable.

Brendan wonders what happened to that tasty little fuck he had just hours before the fall-out and Walker assumed power. If he'd known what was ahead he might've clung to the boy's body and bed and shied away from the power that would be bestowed. His thoughts only linger on Steven for a moment because attachments aren't formed any longer, thanks to all the Tocinemine, and memories like those serve erotic purposes when there's need, but fondness and affection is an alien concept these days.

He's out on the company balcony, as he so often retreats, shadowed by the Walker Corp logo. He looks across the city – or what's left of it. The north's, for once, the centre of the country; Birmingham and below is a skeleton wasteland. Those still alive in those cities are bulging at the eyeballs with radiation. Nothing can save them and Walker couldn't care less. But panic still set in, up north, and streets are wrecked with the evidence.

There's no one on the streets as the curfew begins at seven and ends twelve hours later; the exception being government officials. But then he spots a flash of movement in the shadows of the building opposite. When he heads down there to check it out, he expects the culprit to be long gone, or to be revealed as an unloved household cat. But a man steps out of the shadows instead.

He's carrying a bundle of posters and the red paint on his face is smudged of its original purpose. Red is still the colour of rebellion.

Of course he remembers his name, just like he remembers that boyish fringe and the lustful smirk. He steps into the shadows with him.

"Steven." He looks him up and down, drinking him all in. It's been longer than he can remember since he had a fuck that good as the one they'd shared. The lad's bulked up – Brendan doesn't even know how. Since the land's so massacred they've relied on food imports and the US stopped trading some thirty years ago. There's no food to add any weight to a frame unless you know a black market.

He snatches the posters from his hands, takes a cursory glance, and litters the ground with them. The posters are a step behind, warning of lacing food supplies with obedience drugs.

"Do you know what they'd do to lads like you, on the streets at night spreading lies?" He warns him, trapping him into an unlit alleyway. They rarely bother with courts and trials these days and capital punishment re-emerged ten years ago. Once it was used instead of life sentences, now anyone Walker perceived as a threat was given the death penalty. He whispers, voice dangerous and rough. "You'll end up in a ditch."

He shrugs. "Only if I get caught," Ste's back face to face with the politician he's had on his mind for years. The stress is taking it out on the lines on Brendan's face. But Ste's not frightened; Brendan's no threat. He's an outsider as much as Ste is - why else would he standing a little too close to him in the shadows? Ste can tell that the man has Tocinemine flooding his system, because when they parted some four hundred days ago, there was a softness in Brendan's eyes that now has been snapped away by the hormone in the water. But turning Ste over isn't in Brendan's style, Ste knows it, the man likes a rebellious spirit because once, he had it in him too. And if Ste can manipulate Brendan's lust to gain comfort from him, then he will. That's the problem with those living without Tocinemine in their system; they want love even more.

"You know I could get rid of you just like that." Brendan clicks his fingers in Ste's face.

"But you won't," Ste says, tilting his head up in smug defiance.

And that's how it begins – or restarts – and before the hour's over Brendan is back in Ste's bed, kissing his bare shoulders and plundering satisfaction from every part of his body. Ste lives in a bedsit now and with all education buildings having been handed over to the government his brief university stint is over, so there are no fire escapes to creep through. His flatmates are locked in the cellar plotting something he won't share with Brendan but there's not much hiding needed because the flatmates won't be out of there for hours.

Ste doesn't need to tell Brendan that his flat has become the centre of the rebellion. Posters, pamphlets and bottled water lined the halls. _Do you know what's in your water? Drinking water destroys lives. What the government isn't telling you about the water._ The headlines on the posters swim around Brendan's mind even when Ste's legs are thrown up over his shoulders and each thrust squeezes the air out of his lungs. Ste's just the level of noise he likes, cursing screams that make his dick twitch. Ste's body pounds long after Brendan's out of him and he always goes back for more.

There's barely any space that isn't stocked with bottled water. It isn't the sort available in shops – that contains Tocinemine too – it's red labelled imports or distilled by the protestors themselves. It's safe, it's pure, it allows them to love.

Steven doesn't want to talk about it and that suits Brendan perfectly. He has him all fours at the foot of the bed, ploughing him with the length of his tongue and he seems to thrive off this attention; jerking himself off when Brendan sinks a thumb, or two, over the rim and deep inside him. Sometimes Brendan sinks a line of teeth into the plump of Ste's arse and takes a long suck of his skin. He tastes clean, not like the air in the city which lingers in a bitter tang.

They sit, two orgasms through their night, on the edge of the bed and Brendan reaches forward to open a bottle of the red labelled water.

"You know it'll dilute the Toc in your system," Ste says and Brendan's surprises he's not more offended that Brendan's breaking into his stash. If he told Walker about this, that import loophole would be closed in an instant and they'd never survive on their own distilled stuff. But he won't tell Walker.

"Toc?"

Ste rolls his eyes, taking the bottle out of Brendan's hand once he's gulped a quarter of the it. "Tocinemine. Obviously. You know more than anyone about what it does." Ste loops his finger in the air around his temple: the universal symbol for crazy. "Messes with the chemicals, don't it?"

"And who told you that?" Brendan says, watching Ste wipe away a dribble of water by the corner of his mouth. "Josh?"

Ste grins, partly because Brendan remembered the name of a flatmate he once casually mentioned over 400 days ago and also because he's underestimating him. "It's obvious innit? How else do you explain what's happening out there?" Ste gets up and stands by the window. You'd have to be blind not to see it, even if the news aren't mentioning it (Josh says that's called censorship), everyone can sense a change even if they're doing nothing about it. "Don't you miss it?" Ste asks, looking out at the stars. In all the country's turmoil, they've stayed constant.

"Miss what?" Brendan says, standing directly behind Ste and stroking the downy hair at the base of his spine. It must be ticklish but he doesn't flinch.

"Love," Ste replies.

Brendan's preoccupied, sliding his hands around Ste's waist, pressing their bare bodies together but Ste feels him flinch. "Never had it to miss."

Ste loops his hands behind, pulling Brendan's mouth against his neck and closes his eyes as he's kissed there. He's not sure if it's infatuation that makes him want this moment to go on forever, or if he's starting to fall in love with the man who can't.

::: :::

One night, four weeks later, Brendan's throwing stones at his window.

"Are you crazy?" Ste says when they're finally in the private of his bedroom. "You know what would happen if my flatmates found out we're sleeping together?! One they'd –" Ste's stopped right there mid-sentence because Brendan's dropped the box he's carrying and is kissing Ste like he's starved of him. Ste wants to tell him that they'd kill them both, thinking Ste's a mole in the group, reporting back to the government or they'd suspect Brendan of sleeping with him just to get information. Ste doesn't think he's prying; he doesn't snoop and he doesn't ask questions. He shows up for sex and they might talk about the world as it was, but that's all.

"I bought you something," Brendan says once Ste's asked him about the box. They're safe to spend a little time talking because the flatmates have divided to go leafleting during the curfew. Ste's supposed to be with them, but he's late and now he might as well not bother.

Brendan unpacks box after box of unmarked pills.

In five days' time, taking Vitamin W (even the name is preposterous), will be compulsory. It will become routine along with the radiation tablets and Vitamin D. There will be police checks at clinics (attendance mandatory) where blood samples will be taken. Penalties for not taking it will be death. If the protestors think Tocinemine is a risk to brain chemicals, they've no idea the damage Vitamin W will cause. Vitamin W may as well be chemical brainwashing, because that's the effect it will have. Brendan explains all this to Steven and watches the horror and fear burst blood vessels in his eyes.

"These are placebos," he says it and then kisses Ste on his forehead. He's not touched a drop of tap water in days. "There is enough here for you and the flat to last a month. It'll trick the blood tests too but you gotta be careful with how you act in public otherwise someone'll suspect something."

Ste flips the pill packet over in his hands. "What about the rest of the country?"

Brendan shakes his head. "They'll be bowing at Walker's alter. And ain't nothing I can do about that."

Ste looks sheepish for a moment, not the rebellious soldier in the shadows. "I thought you were on his side."

"I was. When this was just about money. Things are getting ugly. He's not right upstairs," Brendan says and then stops abruptly realising how dangerous it is to bring Ste into that world. He's better off not knowing what Walker is planning.

"If you get found out-"

"That's why you can't tell anyone about me helping ya, you hear me?"

Ste nods. He's boyish when he smiles. He notices a softness returning to Brendan's gaze. "If everyone else is fucked then why me? Why're you helping me?"

Brendan lifts off Ste's t-shirt. Emblazoned on his shoulder blade is a home-made tattoo saying "NP" (No Tocinemine). He kisses it. "Because you ain't like everyone else. You're a fighter." His spirit is too good to be diluted, to beautiful to be chemically altered.

"And you? Do you have to take the vitamin?" Ste's fingertips trace over his face. He can't stand the thought that Brendan might turn against him, not out of choice, but because of a drug that pollutes his bloodstream.

"No. Walker's got me on a leash as far as he's concerned. He doesn't think I'll betray him because I know what he's capable of."

::: :::

Ste knows the next time they meet, some three weeks later, around the back of one of the corporation's disused drug factories – one more primitive than the country needs now – that Brendan's started taking Tocinemine again. Or at least, he's started drinking the water again. He's forgotten the placebo supplies and he brushes off Ste's affection and takes him from behind on the warehouse floor.

"I know you've upped the dosage in the water," Ste says, seeing an aggression in Brendan's eyes that wasn't there before. He's pulling back on his clothes and Brendan is dressed already. He wonders if this is where it ends before he loses Brendan for good. "Why are you drinking it again?"

"What's it to you?"

Ste's ashamed of his naivety; he thought Brendan was on his side, but of course he isn't. He shakes his head. "It don't matter."

::: :::

It's when he's most fearful of Walker's next move that he stops drinking the water. He closes his mouth and eyes when he showers. He eats microwave meals and nothing that needs water to boil. The aggression in the air, a side effect to the higher dosage, means tensions rise and people snap faster than before. Walker's plans become more violent, more oppressive. Walker's confused that the small pocket of rebellion in the city won't die, even with Vitamin W, and he plots how he can turn his slavish population against them.

Brendan tells him they're nothing to worry about – and they're not really, because what kind of army do they have against Walker's might? He thoughts shoot immediately to Steven and how callous he was the last time they met and how it had been out of his control, that he'd come fresh from a meeting where Walker had singled him out and asked, pointedly: "Why aren't you drinking the water, Brendan?"

So that night, armed with fresh batches of placebo, he waits outside the flat for all the other housemates to leave, before borrowing the spare key from under the plant pot and letting himself in. He wonders why Steven is, once again, an outsider of the group. He finds him sitting in the kitchen, tap running and glass in hand.

Brendan rushes forward, shoving him out of the way and turning off the tap. "What are you doing?"

They've not seen each other in days and when he'd starved his system of Tocinemine he realised how cruel he'd been to Steven the last time they'd met. Protecting him these days feels like instinct; he thinks about Steven's welfare more than his own. He'll not see him hurting nor will he let him be dragged into being one of Walker's cyphers.

He shakes Steven's shoulders, trying to get him to answer. But when Steven finally snaps, sending the glass shattering to the wall, Brendan doesn't know if it's because of the Tocinemine or he's unleashing the anger of feeling abandoned.

"Tell me you didn't drink it," Brendan says, wrenching him into his grip by his shoulders.

"So what if I did?" Ste says, flared with anger and shaking free of Brendan's hold.

Brendan leaves him, storms into the hall and rips a red labelled bottle from its packaging and forces it under Steven's lips. "Drink this." If he's been drinking from the tap, this will be the fastest way to dilute it.

Ste pushes him away. "What gives you the right?" he says. "You're the same as him; the same as Walker." Brendan sees his face is blotchy and red, damp from crying. "I told the others that I couldn't join in with the protest tonight because I'm sick." Ste looks towards the dripping tap. "I was gonna drink it. I been thinking about it and it's just easier."

Brendan crouches beside Steven's seat, trying to see the subtle evidence in his eyes to check if he's got Tocinemine in his system. He can't tell for the tears. "Was going to?" he asks because he needs that hope that he didn't.

"I thought about it, but I never." He sniffs, loud and ungainly wipes his nose with his sleeve. It makes Brendan smiles with relief. "I don't even know what the point of all this is anymore," Ste says, his points to a stack of posters on the kitchen table calling an end to enforced drugging. "We're not gonna win."

"Ain't about winning," Brendan says, feeling the broken glass crunch under his shoes as his feet jitter. He can't stay still when he has to talk about thoughts and feelings; it makes him uncomfortable. "It's about staying who you are."

"I don't wanna live like this. Hidin' and fightin'. What's it all for anyway? Everyone out there's a bunch of nodding dogs who don't know how to love. Do you know how lonely it is being the only one who can?" Of course he has no clue what it's like, Ste thinks. He doesn't have the hope that Ste does, he hasn't been pining like Ste has and imaging hopeful scenarios where they end this oppression together.

Brendan looks down to the floor. Of course he knows how lonely it is, of course. Drinking the water numbs it, there's no need or desire for love then. And if you can't feel it then you can't want it, long for it, miss it. "What about your flatmates?" he asks, because it seems like the obvious thing to say.

"Josh and his girlfriend? The other lads who've got girlfriends out there who they split their supplies with? Yeah cos they seem well lonely." Ste folds in on himself as he talks, shrinking smaller. Then he suddenly snaps back to being upright and full of unresolved anger. "What have I got to hope for, eh? That you might come round to use me again or give me false hope if you ain't been on the water? You know, all I wanted was for you to stop drinking it, just to _feel _something so that there was a point to all this."

Brendan stands up and away from him, affronted by his bluntness and anxious with his sudden emotional honesty but Ste just continues. "You know, I might as well just go and pick up any bloke out there, one that don't work for the biggest psychopath for a start. And at least then I won't have to kid myself that he might actually have feelings for me!"

Brendan doesn't let the jealousy he feels break through his expression. He knows now why Walker's so keen to rid the world of this emotion. You only ever hear about the beauty of love; the affection and care and warmth of heart. They don't tell you that it burns with jealousy and resentment and toxic possession. They don't tell of sleepless nights and obsessions.

"Yeah well some fuck out there won't be keeping you safe," Brendan says through gritted teeth.

Ste scoffs and the chair he sits on crashes backwards when he stands. "Oh right. So you keep me safe and you give me the placebos. You've got me right under the thumb, ain'tcha? Proper little Walker in the making. But you've got it even better than him, yeah? Cos I'll bet Walker don't have some sad idiot like me that he can put his dick in."

"Don't you dare compare me to him," Brendan says, up in Ste's face. He makes him feel small just for a second and then steps back, unwilling to lose his cool.

"Well go on then! Explain! How are you any different to him?"

"Because I ain't burying all the pain and loneliness anymore. Not like him. I'm not drinking the water, I ain't touched the stuff for days." He's not raising his voice to make the point; the opposite. He's calm and quiet and soft so that Ste can hear his words and not any anger behind them.

"Oh great! You ain't had any for days, lemme get you a medal." Ste's sarcastic, flinging his arms around in annoyance and still as tightly wound as he was half a minute ago.

Brendan lets a moment pass a beat because he doesn't want to snap this out or rush it, in the gaps between Ste's breathless rants. "I do have feelings for you." He watches Ste stop and turn to him. "I don't wanna lose you not to anyone else, not to Walker. I want to look after you."

Ste doesn't thaw easily and he draws his bottom lip in. "Do you?"

"Yeah," Brendan says and he moves closer, for the right reasons. "When I drink the water, it's taking you away from me." He runs finger and thumb down the side of Ste's cheek and tucks his fringe away from his forehead until it settles. "It's dulling this feeling that I get when I look at ya, and think about you."

Ste presses his head against Brendan's, closing his eyes for a moment and sharing the air that's between them. "Don't drink it again." Ste murmurs and he's not sure Brendan's heard it until there's a nod against him.

In Ste's bed they're against each other, Brendan inside him: muscles tight, palm pressed into another. Brendan's hips roll and eyes open just to see Steven's head thrown back off the pillow. His leg is bent at all sorts of angles, foot against Brendan's back and hand scratching down it. His thrusts are slow and drags through their sensations like someone awakening a feather with their breath, but it still evokes pain and teeth and spanking of flesh, because pleasure's not theirs without a flash of pain and the relief that comes straight after.

When orgasm rips through him and he's pulsing inside Steven like it's never ending, sweat sheening the boy's smooth chest, he's saying his name over and over like he's all there is and has ever been. He crashes down next to him, sliding him into his arms. He breathes deep like he's about to fall into sleep and Ste's half-snuffle into him tells him he'll allow it. But there's more Brendan has to say, even if he feels he can't.

"I need to get you out of here," he says softly, his jaw resting on the top of Ste's head.

"What?" Ste says groggily, head spinning in a post-coming haze.

"It's Walker's next move," Brendan says, his body growing colder as he straightens up in bed. "Executing dissenters. House raids." Brendan tilts Ste's chin to him to kiss him on his lips like sealing a promise. "I'm not losing you. Not now. I'll help you get out of the city, out of the country whatever it takes." He doesn't tell Steven that Walker's onto his group, that he's got photos and is planning to hunt them one by one.

Ste's shaking his head like a child. "Nah, what about you?"

"We'll worry about that when it comes." Brendan stares ahead. He's not thinking about a plan for him or a plan for them, he's just thinking about getting a boat for Steven, getting him out. They still import from Ireland; he thinks he can get him on one of those boats when they make their return trip. He has power and enough money. Steven's disappearance wouldn't be noticed, but his would.

Ste pushes out of Brendan's embrace, sitting up in bed. "No." He shakes his head vehemently. "No. We gotta go bigger. Cos I'm just one person and this isn't about just me." He watches Brendan's face shift to disagree. "Everyone else out there, what about them?"

"I don't care about them."

Ste smiles as he rolls his eyes before he gets serious. "But I do. And I don't want you stuck here alone with Walker's weirdo followers. Cos if we don't do sommit then you'll be one of them eventually. You'll have to be, or Walker'll find out. And then you'll stop being you."

Ste leans back and kisses him, lacing his arms around his middle.

"Go bigger, huh?" Brendan says, brain whirring through plans like passing over cat's eyes in the road; new ideas appearing and dissolving as fast as they arrive.

"You and me," Ste says, voice dreamlike. "Against the world."

::: :::

The plan's too simple, Brendan thinks. But by the time he's acknowledged this it's too late and Ste's on his way to meet up. It's after the curfew and police are heavier on the streets these days so he gives Ste detailed instructions how to avoid their paths.

The main factory is operated by machines twenty hours a day - it needs to be more efficient than a human workforce could deal with, such is the drug demand – so Brendan has no issues with security. Besides, being Walker's chemical advisor, he's expected to make regular visits to the warehouses and the factories. It's a complicated process of codes and fingerprints to get anywhere near the building and he waits for Ste outside. He'll make sure to wipe the security footage when he gets inside.

Steven arrives head to toe in black and it's been mere days since they've laid eyes and hands on each other but that only serves to make the feelings more intense. Ste has a line of red on his cheek for old time's sake and it makes Brendan smile. He feels just like he did when they were debating across the room from each other at the university. He doesn't kiss Ste, because he's got no room left in his head for anything other than the operation at hand. He hasn't even resolved what needs to happen with Walker yet, because there can only be one ending to this tale.

Inside the factory, cylinders of Tocinemine glow purple and the sound of it being produced and pumped through pipes into the reservoir is deafening. This is the hub of all production; it's the source of where all the Tocinemine filters into the water.

Ste's staring up in awe at the machinery, its glassy tubes and metal cisterns. He's impressed and horrified all at once.

"Steven," Brendan says, snapping back his attention with his hands on his shoulders. "The override system needs two people – there's a dual locking bolt."

Ste grins, wild with adrenaline. "You and me, I told you." They share a kiss, one saved for the end of times. With force and passion and bravery.

Brendan swaps smiles with him and they charge ahead, up metal stairwells and along corridors that take fingerprint after fingerprint. When they finally reach the main chamber they need to synchronise turns of the lock, but when they do and it works, the door sighs with release and lets them through. There's countless codes to operate the filter computer system and Brendan pours over the details on his computer tablet, fussing with wires to download the correct passwords.

He exhales. "Okay that's done. For now there's no more Tocinemine going into the water."

"Now what?" Ste asks, looking around to where the drug bubbles in canisters.

Brendan slumps onto his arms. Walker will just fire up the system again if there's still drugs in the tanks. "We need to stop the production and get rid of it somehow."

Ste falters as he looks around. "Brendan there's thousands of litres-"

He snaps. "I know that, I know!" He presses on his palms, rocking on his feet as he thinks. "In my car there's – I was saving them in case I ever had to drink the stuff again or you did. It's like the antidote, it destroys the component in the drug which alters the hormones…" He sees Ste struggling to keep up. "If I could flush those through the system then all of this, it'd all become a placebo."

"Well let's do it then," Ste says, ramped with determination. "You go and sort the security and I'll go and get the stuff. Yeah? Meet you by the entrance of the dual lock."

"Steven, wait – there's-" Brendan hesitates and he stumbles over his words as he tries to explain. "There's a gun in the car. I brought it just in case…"

Ste shakes his head. "What Walker's done is worse than you could ever do with a gun."

He doesn't know how the inner workings of the security systems work so he goes about it with all the anger and the frustration he's kept locked away during Walker's regime and doesn't stop destroying the CCTV system until there's just a broken microchip under his boot.

The lights flicker in the factory and for a moment he breathes a sigh of relief. Until he hears a voice that he recognises.

"Do you think – hypothetically speaking – he'd still love you if you could never love him back?" Walker stands in front of him, holding a glass of water in his hand. He speaks in exaggerated hush whispers. "New batch," he says, pointing at the glass. "This is a nice one. It doesn't just suppress love, one glass and you'll never be able to love again." He flicks the glass with his fingers and it clinks through the factory and then he rests it on the desk in front of Brendan.

"I know you think you're smarter than me, but did you really think I wouldn't keep tracks on you?" Walker smiles with malice. "Naïve little Brendan. What was the big plan when you ran out of placebos for lover boy? I've known about him and his reprobates for a long time, I just wanted to see how far you'd go to protect him. So the question is, how far would you go?"

"What's the deal?"

"Drink that, surrender your love for your precious Steven and obey me instead and I'll make sure he's on a boat out of here. Somewhere safe. You can pick. Hey – if you like, you can choose someone else to take your place in his bed, someone to keep him warm at night. He might even prefer your replacement. That's love for you: fickle. See, you think love's forever, that it's this magical everlasting thing. But it's not. It's just chemicals."

Walker circles now off in his own soliloquy and Brendan's panicked plans his eyes darting all over the place. He could smash the glass but he knows that Walker might have something worse up his sleeve and he can't risk Steven's safety. The thought of his name causes Brendan to look up and he sees him then, creeping closer in the shadows. He has a hood pulled up around his face but Brendan's used to his shape in the dark, he'd know his figure anywhere.

Walker's losing patience and he lunges forward, grabbing the glass and grapples with Brendan until the glass edge is just by his lips. He keeps his mouth squeezed shut as a barrier to the liquid but he knows this struggle can't last long and he's already bleeding from the pressure of the glass.

The force of the bullet hits them both.

Walker's blood splatters Brendan's face, just as the water is already seeping into Brendan's mouth. Ste's still shaking with the power of having shot Walker down and carries the gun with trepidation as he approaches Brendan.

Brendan pushes the heavy weight of Walker's corpse from him, crying aloud with the horror of the situation and tries to force himself into vomiting whatever water has passed his lips. There's blood everywhere; Walker oozes with it. Ste steps over the body, ripping into the antidote packets he picked up out of the car, crying that it's too late. It's too late. He's clumsy with sobs and he's scrabbling with the packaging just to get them to Brendan faster.

Brendan swallows tablet after tablet and he has no idea how many it will take to reverse the levels of drug Walker had laced in the solution but he clings to Steven's clothes, keeping their foreheads pressed and telling him, because he soon he might never feel it again, that he loves him.

::: :::

For the first few hours in the factory, Steven begins to lose all hope. It's like a virus. Brendan's shivering and then he's sweating, delirious and forgetful. At times he doesn't know his own name and he can't stand. He goes blind for a full thirty minutes and drifts in and out of consciousness. He's too out of sorts to panic. Ste talks to him, like they tell you to do in hospital, and drags any hope he has from the pit of his stomach and voices it with as much conviction as he can muster.

When Brendan finally stirs, murmuring Steven's name, Ste has exhausted himself and jerks awake.

"I'm here, I'm here," he says, holding Brendan's face, trying not to cry again.

"We need to get out of here," he manages to say and just has the strength to brush Ste's fringe out of his eyes.

::: :::

In the second week of Brendan's new government, the factories were completely dismantled. The country learns of Tochinemine first through rumour and then through public broadcasts. Love doesn't restore automatically, it grows like a new harvest coming to life.

It's not quite the new hope, the new regime Ste wants or is happy with. People are kept docile and on obedience drugs until the dust has settled and Walker's murder can be covered up. Censorship. Publically he dies in an accident, but is slowly revealed to be the villain, when the country is enlightened of his deeds. Brendan becomes a reluctant leader and he makes decisions that are sometimes too tough to handle. He has Ste next to him, an official position in government, because he leads with his heart. Always.

Brendan has twinges of discomfort in his head. He experiences the joy and the sickness of love and sometimes he wonders how much of the pain and the discomfort is his, or a lingering fragment of the drugging. The world rebuilds and he steps down from power because he's not made for it. But his little rebel, that gorgeous fighter, sticks his stubborn heart in for a little bit longer until he decides to come home, put politics aside and it's just the two of them. Together.


	7. Secrets

_A/N: Sorry it's taken forever to post and finish this one. Obvious this plot might ick some people out but if you brave it then I hope you like it!_

_Summary: Brendan's a closeted single father living a very distant life from estranged, newly out and proud son: eighteen year old Declan. hidden away from his son, Brendan starts to find men to hook up with online and forms an instant attraction to a lad named Ste. the two flirt and share photos, making a date for some no-strings sex, despite Ste admitting he's just started seeing someone. at home Declan tries to make his seemingly homophobic dad uncomfortable by inviting his new boyfriend over. But when Declan brings him home, Brendan realises his son's boyfriend and his own online lover are one and the same. _

:::

::

:

* * *

**Secrets  
**

_**DoubleB:**_** Well your profile says you're looking for some fun…**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** I ain't changed it yet. Got a boyfriend now.**

_**DoubleB:**_** Gotcha. So still looking for that fun then ;)**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** Haha. Ur hilarious.**

_**DoubleB:**_** So I'm told.**

_**DoubleB:**_** Can't be that serious though. The boyfriend.**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** O yea? Why?**

_**DoubleB:**_** Well you wouldn't be online would you?**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** Was just changing my profile. See: dun it now.**

_**DoubleB:**_** So I see.**

_**DoubleB:**_** What are you into then?**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** Wot you mean? Hobbies n that?**

_**DoubleB:**_** I mean, what's your little guy doing for you that I can't.**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** Look, right. I'm not being funny but I told u I've got a boyfriend. I ain't looking for anything proper right now.**

_**DoubleB:**_** Suits me. I'm not into serious.**

_**DoubleB:**_** I was just hoping to fuck your brains out.**

_**DoubleB:**_** But if you're not interested.**

_**Up4it_lad:**_** Maybe**

* * *

**:::**

* * *

_Brendan_

It began exactly like this on an average Monday night, when the house was quiet and the TV was turned down just low enough to fill the silence but not enough that would distract him. Brendan needed as little distraction as possible when using the internet; he was hopeless at it. The lad in question, the one who helped him knock one out, had been one step ahead in the technological stakes. He owned a webcam.

It seemed such a shallow thing to own one, but as he was told often enough by his son, Brendan lived in the dark ages. He was hopeless. Still, this internet lad, from the gay sex chat, clearly wasn't the novice Brendan was; he'd definitely done it before.

Up4it_lad, Ste as he went by (Steven, as Brendan insisted on), had played shy and reluctant again He attempted the 'boyfriend' card once more, with as much doe-eyed pouting as was able through an emoticon on a computer screen. Then Brendan messaged him a photo; his dick stood hard in his hand. They'd already shared the niceties and the pleasantries – age, location, inches – and pictures of their faces. Steven lived on a rough road and wore a part unzipped tracksuit, with eyes that glinted with mischief and cheekbones to marvel at. He was twenty-one. _I'm legal_ – he'd teased. And then Brendan saw in his profile that he liked being dominated and his dick bulged at the prospect.

"And what are you into?" Steven asked when he'd got the webcam on and it flickered a bit as it adjusted to the light. He sat fully dressed, visibly hard under his joggers. Brendan would catch him touching himself absentmindedly when he forgot he was still on camera and he wished he wasn't just words on a screen for the boy. But when his face lit up as he read a message, slightly stumbling and aloud, it was – for want of a better word – cute. Brendan typed back: _Troublemakers like you. Someone who knows what they want._

It had escalated quickly that first night. Brendan had typed instructions – commands – for Steven into the chat's little white box and watched the messages ping through. Steven's concentration would form little lines on his face and he'd taken to squeezing his bottom lip in his fingers.

"Like this?" he'd asked, running his index finger under the base of his cock and seeking approval from the screen. _Nice and slow_ – Brendan would type back, before lowering his own hand and mirroring the actions.

For Brendan there was something elicit and exciting about this new form of sex. He told the lad what he'd do to him in language that made the boy blush and then fist his dick, exactly how he was told. Brendan found himself murmuring, even though Steven couldn't hear him, and succumbed to a rough-handed wank before Steven was allowed to finish. He was all rosy and soft when he had, his little chest heaving up and down. Brendan wondered how often he did this performance for other men but sex with strangers wasn't supposed to produce jealousy so he left it there and wanted to know when they could do it again.

It became an unsaid arrangement that they'd hook up online and sometimes on the phone almost every other night. Brendan had a club to run some nights but he grew more thankful for Declan's absence in his life the more he indulged in this new habit.

They'd never been close. More his fault than his son's, but as Declan had approached adulthood the cavity had blown wider and wider. Declan wanted to attend university in England and living with his father was the cheapest option. But even under the same roof, they rarely shared a room for more than ten minutes. A day could pass with their only communication being notes on the fridge or texts that explained their whereabouts. Declan had studies, a social life and worked part time at a local bar. He remained as disinterested in his father's life as much as ever. And that suited Brendan.

Brendan had learned Declan was gay through his ex-wife, from an unexpected phone call nearing midnight, a week before Declan was due to turn eighteen. Eileen had been appalled, lingering with old Catholic judgements, for a week or so, but Brendan offered his son nothing but silence, fearing he'd smell the likeness on him. No one was to know it was like father like son. He almost resented how easily his son was able to accept his sexuality and come out, unapologetically. Brendan hadn't seen much evidence for his new queer way of life, but unlike Eileen, he wouldn't go snooping for it either.

A grunting breakfast sat between them, Declan spooning cereal with his eyes glued onto morning TV, Brendan with toast and a paper.

"Out tonight, da," he said, washing up his bowl and doing the routine check of his pockets for cash and his student card. Brendan pretended not to see the stash of condoms in his wallet and kept his grimace private. "To a club in town. _The Elevator_. That alright?"

He never asked permission. It was a test; his motive transparent. The Elevator was a gay club. He'd been in there himself, one desperate night. Nightclubs weren't really his scene. Too noisy and sweaty and you couldn't really get a look at a guy when he was lit up in strobes and purple.

It churned his stomach to think of Declan in there. The bodies, the predators, the openness. He looked up from his paper, lips splitting with a tight smile. "Sure. Go ahead. Have fun." A part of him hated that Declan lived in a world he couldn't.

Declan skulked off to uni, he almost seemed disappointed that Brendan gave him no reason to argue. The door crashed behind him and Brendan prayed to God he wouldn't bring anyone home that night. He couldn't bear the thought of it, least of all because he wasn't getting any.

Brendan sat back in the chair at the kitchen table and with the house to himself, called Steven.

"Did I wake ya?" Brendan asked, his voice smoky with the last dregs of a black coffee.

He heard the sleep rustled covers on the other end. Steven yawned. "What time is it?"

"Gone nine," Brendan said, imaging his slight body drowned in bed covers, all soft from dreams. He could picture him rubbing his eyes and shifting his morning glory in cloying boxer shorts.

He gave a half laugh. "This better be worth it, you waking me up on my day off." He vaguely remembered Steven mentioning he worked as a chef, it had inevitably lead to some appalling cookery innuendo, but even that seemed to amuse Steven.

"Ain't I always?" Brendan wondered if he was alone, whether the infamous boyfriend slept beside him. He shook that thought from his head, letting his imagination wild with images of the lad in bed.

"You alright?"

"You free tonight? Only, I got the house to myself and I've had enough of the webcam live shows and my own hand." He had started living for Ste's Oscar worthy performances, the shameless obedience and open mouthed lust. But it had stopped being enough.

"You getting bored of me?" Ste said, voice dizzy with affection.

"I'm getting bored of not being able to fuck you properly. I wanna suck you off; I don't just wanna tell you about it," Brendan said, moving around the kitchen, hand passing over every surface. He'd do him in here, take him until he had prints of the worktops etched into his skin.

Ste panted on the other end of the phone. "I want that too," he said. "But I can't tonight, I've got plans."

"Cancel them."

"Can't."

Brendan realised he was sulking when he caught his reflection in the glass of the back door. He knew it would be that bastard boyfriend excuse again. "When then? I ain't waiting much longer."

"You gonna find someone else then?" Steven asked and Brendan hoped it was jealously he could hear.

"Tuesday night. I'll come to yours. And if your fella's there then you can get rid of him, alright? I don't care how." Possessiveness crept into his voice and he found his fist clenched by his side.

"Okay," Steven said after a pause. "Tuesday night. I'll text you my address."

::: :::

Monday night Declan passed through the house in the skinniest of jeans and a citrus aftershave that made Brendan dwell too long on what would await him at The Elevator. Besides, he spent endless minutes smirking into that phone of his. Brendan was beginning to feel like Eileen, suspicious and snooping, even though part of him daren't entertain the idea of Declan actually seeing anyone.

Brendan's body tightened with frustration and he longed for the thrill of seeing Steven on the webcam, but it seemed the whole world but him was out partying. He headed to a late night gym, pumping some iron until his t-shirt looked better across his arms and headed home before exhausting himself. He had tomorrow to think about.

There were guys at the gym, a whole range. One or two looked like they were worth a good seeing to, but something held him back. He told himself it was delaying anticipation for tomorrow, but partly he knew his fixation on Steven (until he'd had him at least) blocked out the appeal of any other shags. For all the starving he was doing, he thought Steven had better be worth it.

::: :::

Working in a nightclub – a straight one - meant the excuse to arrive home late came easily; Declan remained unbothered and rarely looked up from his phone. Brendan couldn't understand kids and their phones, it was always: bleeding Facebook this and fucking Twitter that. He had no clue what a hashtag was and didn't care.

Brendan had caught Declan with the odd sneaky smile again and he would confront him about it in the morning if he could stomach the explanation. But right now, all day, all he thought of, hours dragging on by, was sex. He craved the sweat and the smell of it. The heat and the sounds. He wanted to pick Steven up and throw him across the room, watch his eyes roll back and fuck every nerve of his 'til he fried. His balls ached from it. It felt like the hunger strike for body and soul. He already knew Steven's arse was something to be enjoyed, he'd had the full show on camera: fingering and all. Shy was not a word you could ever use for Steven. But now was the time when he'd really get to see what he was made of.

He dressed in a suit, slim fit shirt and four buttons undone. No messing. It helped the excuse, but more importantly, it gave him swagger in his step. Dressed like this he felt omnipotent – like he could do or have anything he wanted – tonight would prove it.

He wouldn't park on Steven's road for fear of his wheel caps being nicked so he left it a few streets away and walked, coldness whipping through him. Standing at Steven's door, a battered washing machine on the lawn and tatty net curtains at the window, a brief pang of doubt infiltrated. But he rolled his shoulders, shaking it off and pressed the doorbell.

It was his smile that Brendan noticed first. How could he not? The half-snorting and shy laugh, the wide spread of white teeth, a few pointy. The way it made his eyes look, like someone had planted a whole universe of stars in them. His elbow looked rough skinned as he raised his hand to rub behind his neck, his polo shirt lifting. Brendan felt awkwardness slipping in as he had nothing in his hands to offer; perhaps he should have brought a bottle.

"Alright?" he said, leaning his chin on the door frame, biting down on his lip. He was skinnier in reality, all bones and sunny flesh.

"Alright." Brendan hopped forward on his feet, hands stuffed into his pockets. Phone, keys, wallet, condoms. He hoped the lad wasn't the small-talk kind.

How they got from the doorway, up the stairs was a blur. They'd hung around each other in the hallway in stalemate. Ste mumbled and shut the door, edging past Brendan and excusing himself in a bashful way so removed from his webcam shows. Then Brendan shoved him, two hands on his shoulders and the impact scaring Ste into thinking he'd invited an internet psycho into his house. But Brendan's hands moved immediately to Ste's jeans and the anxiety slipped from him as Brendan unbuttoned and unzipped them, barely pausing to drag him up the stairs. They stumbled on the second step of the stairs and Brendan pulled Steven against him by his rapidly falling jeans, mouths meeting.

The sound of the kiss dragged out of his gut, through Ste's veins. The kiss rushed and hurried and breaths came jagged, all too dizzying and fast. Ste had a lip full of moustache and he opened up, tongue sinking against Brendan's like an overlapping tide. Brendan heard the bubbling whine seeping from his nose and dropped his clutch of jeans, gripping handfuls of his arse and squeezing. You couldn't describe a kiss over a phone or in little swearing messages on a screen. But a kiss in the flesh, with hissing and whining and perfect mews of rippling pleasure, that was worth their meeting alone.

Top of the stairs. Slam into the wall. _Fuck_. Tripping. Stripping. Steven giggling. Brendan prowling him, hunting him. _Fuck_. Ste dropping to his knees. _Fuck._ His eyes were as black as the darkness of the bedroom. He left Ste for a moment to turn on the light and when it flooded the room yellow, Steven was still kneeling, carpet burns as he wanked. His eagerness wasn't unexpected, but it still jolted Brendan with lust. He strode back to him, ego soaring.

"Go on," Brendan said, taking his face and chin and just basking in that seedy glow on Steven's face. Ste took Brendan's cock in hand and played with kissy motions at the head. Prick tease. Brendan told him so and watched his defiance – his right to prove himself – as he sat back on his heels, opened up his mouth with silky tongue on show. His eyes stayed open; smug. Brendan's groan throbbed through him, straight into his command of Ste's head. The boy didn't need any direction. He hadn't got the words for this on the phone or in the chat boxes, but in the flesh – _fuck_. He made Brendan feel uneasy on his feet; that was a first.

He wasn't about to waste his first load of cum down Ste's throat – or on his face, whatever he was into – so he pushed him away, dragging him to his feet and kissed him. It was all heat and mint on his tongue. The excitement of control singed from Brendan's mouth to Ste's. The thrill of a new body had him catching up with himself – desperate to feel every part of him – and battling with the need to savour every moment.

"You want this, do you?" he asked, one hand on his shoulder and the other with tempered squeezes of Steven's dick. His skin looked so smooth in the light. To see his body and face in reality was almost as good at tasting it. He recovered each image to memory, remembering fine flushes of hair or pink tinges to his skin.

In the corner of the bedroom he spotted the laptop and camera set up and smiled to himself. It felt like a victory – the chosen one – to be here, in the bedroom making this little horny fuck's eyes gloss over and mouth murmur, all slack.

Brendan had pushed him across the bed, opening his thighs apart. Steven sparked up at the intensity.

"You gotta use a condom," Ste said, flat on his bed across the bed horizontally, legs spread and knees bent. "My boyfriend." There was a little murmuring guilt there and Brendan ignored it, licking great warm strips of Ste's thighs and lathering saliva against his hole. He tongued him clean open, thumbing the fleshy curves of his cheeks, making it known how much he enjoyed it.

"Your boyfriend can fuck off," Brendan said, voice mimicking his. "You're mine for the night." Showing he played safe, Brendan flashed a condom foil at him. He stood and sheathed, taking Ste by the hips and then under the knees. The angle - like this – Ste spread and flat on his back, Brendan standing, with more control than he'd dare imagine, drove them both crazy.

"Look at me," Brendan said, turning his head. "I want you looking at me."

Ste's fingers curled around his own dick and he panted, feeling that first press of Brendan's head against his rim. He whimpered, almost begging.

The bed wasn't made for sex like this. It creaked and groaned at every fuck. He thought he'd break it, but Steven wasn't stopping him anytime soon. The sheets looked fresh on, their washing powder floral soon crushed by the roll of bodies and Steven sprawled across them. He was the very image of innocence: spread out over the white, lips blood-full and parted. His hair was shaggier at the back, ruffled with Brendan's hands raked through it, sometimes Steven's own hands gripped chunks. He pulled at it when he couldn't think what else to do with his body, the way he moved was like Brendan had lit a fire inside him.

His spine seemed to spasm every now and then and his hips would catapult upwards, almost like he was scrabbling to get away and feverish from it. Brendan spat in his hand, wetting the head of Ste's cock and balled it in his palm. Ste's neck threw back, the longest stretch of throat available and Brendan halted the ferocious pump of his hips and hunched over to lick every one of his goosebumps. He tasted faintly of aftershave; he'd made an effort.

They kissed. Brendan had the hot pull of him, tight around him as he paused, biting Ste's bottom lip down. His weight nudged little uncomfortable thrusts out of him and Ste moaned at the sensation, mouth slipping away for air.

When Brendan stood upright again, grunting force after force into him, Ste was sticky with sweat. A babbling mess of a man. His body writhed in an orchestra of sensations and he stiffened with electric pleasure one moment, limp the next. He had white hand prints scorched into his thighs, and finding that rhythm of power, Brendan would wrangle him back across the bed, only to yank him closer – deeper – just to hear a cry punch from Ste's chest. Brendan looked down on Ste as he masturbated with all the energy he could summon. And that was enough then, to watch his head flop to the side and bliss ripple pink through his body.

Brendan smeared Ste's come over his belly, dumped the full rubber in the bin and collapsed down next to him. Steven liked kissing, he learned. They tangled up in open mouthed kisses and keening, messy noises. He giggled too often for Brendan's liking, so he tackled him onto his back and shushed a finger to his mouth.

They hadn't talked much and he didn't mind. He didn't need to know about childhood pets or what Steven's favourite movie was. By the end of the night he knew enough: he liked two fingers at once; he liked his nipples sucked and gentle teeth; he had a cum-face that would make any man lose his mind; he'd half witter about having a boyfriend whilst simultaneously asking for something a bit rougher; he blushed when asking to be spanked; he'd never had real life sex with a man from the internet before; he made good tea; he wanted to do it again; he didn't consider it cheating if it was just fucking without feelings.

"You're not what I expected," Ste said at the bottom on the stairs in just his boxers. It was difficult for Brendan to tear away from someone he fancied as much as Steven.

He frowned, shaking on his jacket. "What d'you mean?"

"Proper intense." He clung girlishly to the banister of the stairs, resting his chin on it. "I like it."

"Don't let your boyfriend hear you say that," Brendan said, heading for the door. He glanced at his phone. Shit, it was nearly four in the morning.

Ste blinked, a smarting comment on his lips – but he held back – leaving Brendan to let himself out and disappear into the night.

::: :::

He sang in the shower, whistled as he dressed. Nothing like a good shag to improve a morning. He even laid out a whole table of breakfast foods for Declan and sat there eating his way through the mountain whilst Declan picked.

"Something on your mind?" Brendan asked. He couldn't stop shovelling down food between breaths. Declan looked at him with the disgust reserved for pigs.

"Da I'm gonna bring someone over tonight for dinner." There was no question in it and the bluntness aimed solely at Brendan's discomfort. "He's my boyfriend and I want you to meet him. And make an effort."

Brendan clattered up from the table, shaking his head. "No. What you do and where you go is your business. I don't want _it_ in my house here." He swore he wanted to protect his son, but the resentment twisted - raw and nauseating.

"Dad, we're dating okay? We're not going to have sex on the sofa whilst you're watching TV! I invited him, alright? It's my house too." Declan stood, eyes flaring. He was still in that teenage phase of huffing off when he couldn't express his frustration in words or fists. "He's coming over tonight so you better get used to it."

When the time came, Brendan had bullied himself into buying one of those stick-in-the-oven lasagnes, a new bottle of whiskey and Rosé for Declan and his fella. He had to get a dig in somewhere. He dressed down, woollen black top and jeans, and sent Steven a text from upstairs as he got ready. _Taste of me still? I bet you do. Tomorrow night?_

His phone stayed in his palm until the reply came, seconds later. _That wud b telling….2moro sounds gd. X_

He let the smugness play across his face and bundled clothes together for a wash, when he heard the key in the front door and a distant rumble of chatter. He rubbed his forehead with two palms, willing himself to make this as pain-free as possible.

He took the stairs two at a time, hearing Declan in the living room. "Here's my dad now."

The next few steps became a nightmare. Like a cartoon which slides bulging eyes into focus and the camera spins off kilter. Brendan stood facing him, fixing his face into something solid and mechanical. His mind hurtled through image upon image, like a flipbook of pornographic positions and sensations. Ste's head darted around like the twist of a tap and the whites of his eyes grew sharp with panic when everything rushed into focus. Everything they'd done. Ste was Declan's boyfriend. Declan was the boyfriend he'd mocked, saw competition in and took pleasure in screwing his boyfriend.

Brendan nodded at him, the faintest of acknowledgements; it was what Declan would expect. "Nice to meet you. Brendan." He folded his arms without offering his hand, felt sick on his feet.

"Dad, this is Ste."

Brendan looked up at his son, dopey with pride. And then to Ste. He looked a different lad sat on the sofa – young and nervy – green around the edges. He smiled for Declan's benefit and his voice dried up as he asked for directions to the bathroom. Brendan knew, because he'd have done the same, Steven was throwing up in there, purging himself of the night spent with Brendan inside him.

He poured himself a whiskey, blanking Declan out of habit and choice. Guilt made the bottle shake, sickness made the whiskey burn dry holes in his mouth. He wanted that boy out of his house, out of his head. It repulsed him - clutching water from the faucet and spreading it over his mouth - that he still thought of Steven as his.

Declan checked on Ste in the bathroom and brought him back to the living room, stroking the small of his back. The image would have dislodged Brendan's comfort if his son had been showing _any_ boy such tender, romantic affection let alone the one Brendan had been pounding into for hours. Keeping his sexuality locked up felt safer, cleaner, he hated all the fairy PDAs and Pride marches. It felt like a private, unwanted sickness and he hated the youth and the inhibited for embracing their curse whilst he dwelled in loathing. His son made homosexuality look easy and fulfilling. He didn't suffer the loneliness and the fear, the hatred.

He still felt Steven's nail marks on his back and here he was, being nursed by his boyfriend, Brendan's son.

"I don't feel good. Think I'm just gonna…" Ste said, his voice trailing off.

Brendan knocked back a third whiskey, swaggered over with his embraced adrenaline high. "And miss out on lasagne, Steven?"

"It's _Ste_," Declan said, pausing the softer tone for a critical one shot at Brendan.

"Well, you're a Ste_ven_, ain'tcha?" Brendan said, sloshing his glass at Ste. He felt like he owned him. He remembered so vividly using his full name in the throes of orgasm.

Ste swallowed, nodding and looked to Declan for an agreement that he could escape. When Declan gave him a lift, Brendan took the whiskey bottle to the sofa and drank until his guilt and confusion blurred him unconscious. When Declan arrived home, the fire alarm started and he coughed, shoving Brendan awake. The lasagne had caked the kitchen in smoke.

Declan threw its remains in the sink.

"What you playing at Da?!"

Brendan swayed. Words felt like treacle and he was dimly aware of what he couldn't say. "The dinner?"

"Everything! You, off your face, dinner's wrecked, you messed everything up with Ste."

Brendan knocked back at his mention, stumbling against a table. He laughed a little, vicious. "Him. You know what he's after, don't you? He doesn't want to meet the family-" he murmured a little at the irony "-he is gonna break your heart. You watch. Break it."

Declan scoffed. "You know, mum was right. You're a nasty, ignorant-"

"Keep it coming Deccy, I've been waiting for all this." Brendan's deranged smile hung like a lopsided coat hanger. Declan wrenched past him, slamming the door of his bedroom shut. Brendan fumbled for his phone, drilling out a text to Steven: _You stay away from my son. I never want you in my house again._

::: :::

If Declan's moods were anything to go by, Brendan suspected his warning had worked. The hostile mood of the house had grown worse than ever, with Brendan clicking through profiles online mindlessly, none quite having the upturned flick of a nose, the blue eyes, the cheekbones and the scrawniness he desired. He felt grubby pawing himself to saved photos on his phone of Steven, but he reasoned that the boy was no longer dating his son and the moral guidelines wouldn't apply any more. Declan disappeared for even longer stretches of the day, heading into uni or locked away in his room. For the first time ever, Brendan hoped he'd found someone serious to date that wasn't Ste. It might appease his guilt.

He suspected it even more when a sly smile appeared on his lips as Brendan headed out the door to work.

"You home late tonight, Dad?" he asked, flicking his eyes up from his phone.

"Three-ish," Brendan said, straightening out the collar of his shirt, underneath the suit jacket. "Why you got something planned?"

Declan shrugged. "Might have a mate round." The word 'mate' clanged through the flat in its obviousness. Brendan's shoulders steeled and then relaxed, he could feel himself overcompensating through his expression.

He headed to work, not feeling bogged down in the weight of his indiscretion and trying to convince himself that Declan playing the field was a positive thing. Fortunately it was a busy night in the club and he didn't have the thinking space to dwell on it.

When he got home the living room was littered with trails of beer bottles and he decided to leave it for the morning, climbing the stairs to bed. As he passed the bathroom the door opened and he expected a groggy Declan to slip back into his bedroom, instead Steven Hay stood in the doorway in a snug pair of boxers.

Brendan didn't have time to read Steven's expression, he slammed him back into the bathroom and closed the door behind them.

"What the fuck did I tell you?!" He pushed the centre of Ste's chest until his back hit the tiled wall. "Get out of my house."

Ste didn't move. "Declan invited me."

Brendan couldn't believe the indignation in his face; the fact he didn't cower or carry an inch of shame. He scoffed. "Declan know about your little sex shows, does he?"

"We weren't exclusive," Ste said, avoiding eye contact for a moment.

"So he doesn't know." Regardless of what they'd done, Brendan wasn't about to let his son convince himself he was dating a nice guy, one who'd treat him right.

"He knows enough. But he doesn't know his dad's gay, does he?"

Brendan towered over him, his eyes widening with fury. "You can shut your fucking mouth, that's none of your business."

"Sorta is though." Ste cocked his head to the side, armed with an unflinching confidence that he had the upper hand.

"What, because you've had my dick down your throat that gives you the right to come in here and play games with my family?!"

"Look, I wasn't to know you were his dad, was I? You were just some bloke. You didn't tell me you had a teenage son neither." Some of his arrogance had dissipated, his shoulder shrunk, easing out from the cornered trap Brendan had him in.

Brendan smarted at the accusation that he was somehow at fault for not being honest. "I don't tell my life story to every fuck." Brendan jabbed him in the chest with two saluted fingers. "And you don't come back here knowing what you know. We're two strangers that fucked. Done. End of discussion." His eyes traced over the sight of Steven in the bathroom in the close fitting underwear. He could taste the freshness of his skin on his tongue still. He remembered every conversation they'd ever had and the feel of being tight inside him. Brendan's thoughts snapped back to why they were both here, arguing through hushed voices. "You don't come into my life and start dating my son."

"It's nothing to do with you, though!" Steven's features grew pointed when he was frustrated.

"He's my son!"

"And he's _my_ boyfriend."

Brendan shoved him, taking a step back and finding his feet again as he twisted his knuckles into his own forehead. "It makes me sick looking at you, knowing you're playing him for a fool, getting yourself off on webcam for anyone who'll ask."

"I told you," Ste said through locked teeth. "I didn't do that with anyone when I was with him. I only did it with – I only…slept with _you_."

"Yeah, yeah I believe you!" Brendan paced the room, he wasn't sure who he needed clarification for, for Declan's benefit or his own. He shoved the display of his phone into Ste's eye line. Intimate photos, texts (_I'm gettin hard jst thinking about u. I wanna cum in ur mouth all over again_).

Ste creased, pushing the phone away. "You kept them?!"

Brendan ignored that, tilting Ste's chin to face him. "That's not a guy who's looking after his man at home is it, now?"

Ste pushed him away, gesticulating with his arms. "Things hadn't really got going with Declan and I thought me and you were just like a fling. I fancied you. It was just…exciting."

"I won't let you date him," Brendan said ending the discussion by pulling open the door, "You've got until tomorrow to end it with him."

"Or what?!" Ste called out, but it was too late. Brendan had slammed himself into his bedroom.

::: :::

* * *

_Ste_

Ste hadn't slept much at all. He had purple moons under his eyes to prove it. He sat up in bed watching Declan sleep, thinking everything over. Maybe he had been stupid to get back with him knowing he lived under the same roof as Brendan, but part of him – that trodden down nastier side of him – enjoyed doing it just to spite Brendan. He didn't like being told to do and Declan was a nice guy, he wasn't about to throw away something stable that made him happy just on a near stranger's say-so. No, fuck him – Ste thought. He wasn't about to be told who he could and couldn't see, not by anyone. Brendan wasn't going to confess and he wouldn't have wanted Ste to reveal the truth either. They had reached a stalemate.

Anyone else might've found the situation so stiflingly awkward that they would avoid situations where all three of them were in the same house, but Ste – as defiant as ever – seemed to get a real kick out of rubbing it in Brendan's face. He wasn't even sure why, but there was something about watching Brendan squirm and him being powerless to stop it. It became obvious by the way he held himself that he was uncomfortable in his own skin and making up for it in power suits and bravado.

He left for work one morning, shooting the pair of them down with derision, leaving Declan miserable.

"I'm sorry about my dad," he said, mumbling over his breakfast.

Ste stroked his shoulder blades. "Don't worry about him, I'm not."

"I just wanted him to like you, you know?" Everything Declan said these days seemed to be steeped in uncomfortable irony when it came to mentioning Brendan. Away from him and the flat Ste could almost separate the two, they looked so different, they behaved differently, besides a shared brooding. Ste was thankful that they kissed differently, touched him differently, had sex with him differently; he had distracted himself out of comparing the first time he had sex with Declan. He had been grateful that he wasn't his first; he didn't want the pressure of that kind of idolisation.

One night at Ste's, in his arms, Declan looked across to the computer set up in the room. "Did you talk to many guys before we met?"

Ste ruffled with a laugh, running his hands down Declan's arm. "Why'd you ask?"

"Curious, I suppose."

They'd met in the bar Declan worked; Ste liked his accent and his smile and attitude. He liked the attention – he always had. It was probably the reason he'd tried taking up internet dating, he liked the way the virtual envelope lit up if someone was interested. It meant not having to face rejection, and he didn't think he was skilled at hitting on guys. What had happened with Brendan seem to flourish out of nowhere, like Brendan had seen something in him and coaxed it out of him, stripping him of his inhibitions and worshipping him for the honesty underneath.

"Just a few," Ste said eventually. Before Brendan they hadn't been much more than a cheeky flirt. He hadn't exchanged phone numbers or felt giddy whenever a message came through.

"Did you…get off with any of them? In real life?"

Ste's fingers stilled and he shifted besides Declan. He tried to push the images of Brendan from his mind.

"Only one," Ste said, half muttered into the pillow. "Just sex, nothing else." It came out in a rush of words and he felt his skin tingle. He knocked his head against the side of Declan's playfully. "You still ain't told me about this infamous ex of yours."

Declan clammed up as much as Ste had. "It's just history."

"Go on…"

"We were good mates and then things got, you know, complicated – full on – and I don't even know why it ended, to be honest with ya." Declan paused and he turned in Ste's embrace. "Ste, can we just get back to having some time alone, without my da around or talking about exs?"

Ste kissed him. "Course." Even that close to him, Ste sensed a distance they were both holding back on.

::: :::

Initially he'd thought Declan's insistence to conduct their relationship under Brendan's glare had been because Declan was serious and traditional when it came to his feelings, but part of Ste started to wonder if he was being used to rile Brendan's homophobia and play the two off each other. It was more of a head fuck than he realised.

Declan seemed to time it so they were sprawled out and kissing on the sofas when Brendan walked in from work, although Ste had leapt away like touching an electric fence the first time. But as Brendan's embarrassment morphed into disgust, Ste became more determined to push his buttons. He found himself cosying up to Declan, slow open-mouthed kisses and opening his eyes to see Brendan's reaction. He kissed Declan with his gaze connecting with Brendan's the whole time.

The anger and disgust perpetuated in the darkness of his eyes and his hatred of their being together fuelled Declan too, trying to rile the supposed homophobia out of his father. Sometimes Ste would flush with guilt when it dawned on him that acts with Declan were spurred by this desire for payback, and part of him – a tiny, quiet, crushed part of him – wanted Brendan's jealousy.

Ste and Declan split their time between Declan's place and Ste's. He wasn't embarrassed by the council flat, although he sensed Declan wasn't so impressed. When they both played with revengeful spite against Brendan, they were twinned but beyond that Ste sensed a gulf in their lives. Ste had dragged himself up through a miserable childhood and petty crime and Declan, whilst having a rather distant relationship with his parents, had it fairly easy.

They had a laugh, Ste hanging out at the bar Declan worked and him coming to the restaurant where Ste worked to nab a few freebies in his lunch break. One lunch time, it was Brendan who showed up.

"Can I have a word?" he said, catching Ste between the service hatch and the kitchen. Brendan scratched the scruff of stubble by his chin.

"I'm working," Ste replied, but loitered for a moment because he needed to call service.

"Five minutes," Brendan said, side stepping the stream of waiting staff; they eyed him suspiciously. Ste scowled and folded away his apron when the head chef let him take an early break after he lied that his uncle was in the restaurant.

"You can't just turn up here," Ste said bundling on his coat as they headed to a crummy little café Brendan had pointed out. "What if Declan sees?"

"He's at the university, I thought you of all people would know that."

Ste ignored his snide remark and they sat away from the window in a greasy spoon. A waitress swanned over, stunting their silence.

"I'll have a black coffee three sugars, he'll have a latte four sugars." Brendan handed her the menu with a tight smile.

Ste glared. "I can order me own drink you know."

Brendan shrugged. "Well that is how you like it, isn't it? Creamy. Sweet. That's how I remember it."

Ste folded his arms, chin pointed away from him. His gaze made Ste shivering and uncomfortable. A wave of silence passed with Brendan's eyes on him the whole time.

"What do you want anyway?"

Brendan sighed. "Touchy." The waitress placed their coffees down. "That's no way to talk to your father in law." The way the waitress's expression shifted didn't go unnoticed by Ste. No "father in law" spoke like that, with velvet tones designed to lick him inside out.

"You might be his dad, but it's got fuck all to do with you." Ste said, snatching his coffee when the girl was out of ear shot.

"I thought I'd made myself clear; he's my son and I won't have him bring some tart under my roof, not when he thinks there's a future to be had."

"Me, the tart? You're the one who started off the whole thing in the first place!" Ste said. "It sounds to me like you're jealous."

"Jealous?" He scoffed.

"Well, why else would you be bothered, eh? Declan and me, we're good. You should be happy for us, for him."

Brendan's face twitched and he half repeated the words with movements of his mouth. "How much?" he asked.

"What?"

"How much for you to leave him?" Brendan took out his wallet. "Four hundred?"

Ste recoiled. "I don't want your money!"

"Eight hundred?"

"I'm not some hooker, Brendan. You can't pay me off!" Ste said too loudly; people in the café began looking over. "How can you ever do that to Declan? He's your son."

"And you can sleep at night, guilt free, with me in the next room, can you?"

Ste looked into his drink, swallowing. "I do, don't I?"

They finished their drinks in silence, Ste intently studying the patterns on the table and the people around him. Had anyone ever lived with a more fucked up set up? He doubted it. By the time they had finished the café was almost empty and besides it being just after five, dusk had fallen.

"I wish you weren't his dad," Ste said softly. He meant it in so many ways. The air simmered between them from their first meeting and hadn't relented.

Brendan didn't look at him, just snorted with contempt.

::: :::

Ste had tried to end it one night. He had it all planned in his head. He'd say he wasn't really to settle down and get serious (even though he knew Declan felt the same way), he was trying to make it as painless as possible. But then Declan came to his and he'd messed up an exam badly and Ste couldn't pile on more misery for him.

Brendan didn't make things easier for them either.

He hovered around, under Ste's skin, invading like the hairs on the back of his neck. He wandered around the downstairs, whiskey in hand and shirt undone on the phone. He made Ste's breath catch in his throat, but Brendan was aloof with it, like Ste wasn't even on his radar. Ste found his mind wandering when he was in the room, even if Declan was speaking and the TV was on.

If Brendan came in from the gym, his shirt pulled across his newer muscles, dark trails of sweat on him and Ste couldn't look away. He'd throw himself into the shower and Ste would picture the water sluicing across his body and down across all those haired places he'd made warm with his lips. If Brendan was out elsewhere Ste would watch the clock, wondering where he was, who he was with.

Ste had been with Declan now for three months and still, things weren't getting any easier.

He'd been stupid on occasion too. Like being left in the house alone with Brendan. One night he'd drunk himself warm with whiskey and Ste had grimaced through a measure himself. They'd sat on separate sofas and the TV flickered light through the room playing a movie. Ste shifted uncomfortably as a sex scene played out and Brendan's eyes tracked his body.

"You don't have to sit down here on my account," he said, a slight slur in his voice. "Although I ain't complaining."

"M'just watching the end of this," Ste said, not having a clue what the film was even about.

"Tell me this, Steven," Brendan said, pouring himself another drink. "If he hadn't brought you round here that day, if you'd never met _Declan's dad_…where would we be right now?"

Ste shifted in his seat, filling his lack of response with a gulp of beer. Brendan leered at him, making Ste feel exposed, blushing in his self-consciousness.

"What position?" Brendan asked, elongating the words in sarcasm.

"Don't do this. It's not fair," Ste said, hands wrung together.

"To who?"

"To your son!"

Brendan knocked back his glass and disappeared upstairs, calling out: "If you cared for him that much you would have ended it by now."

::: :::

* * *

_Brendan_

Days passed, the tension simmering in the house. The distance between Brendan and his son widened, and Declan stayed away at Ste's more. Brendan suspected it was his own doing and whilst it was a relief, Ste still managed to pre-occupy his thoughts for long stretches of the day. It felt like a sickness, being kept awake and prisoned by this obsession for him. He struggled even more as a father, because how could he take an interest in Declan's life when he spent so long fantasising about his boyfriend?

One evening when they were both in and Steven was working, Brendan bought Declan a take-away and mentally he drew this as a new start for them.

"How's the studying going?" he asked, delving into the Chinese and staying away from the veggie-only muck he'd ordered especially for Declan.

Declan shrugged; he barely mentioned his work. "S'okay," he said. He didn't look up from his plate as he ate.

"And the rugby?"

"I've got a match tomorrow afternoon."

Brendan saw an opportunity to make an effort. "I'll come and watch you, if you like."

"No bother dad, I'm sure you've got better things to be doing." Declan lifted his gaze just long enough for a brief look of scorn.

"I'm a free man," he said, deflecting the attention by talking about the food instead. They didn't mention Steven.

The bitter weather of the match kept Brendan hopping on his soles as he watched Declan, hands thrust into his pockets. There weren't many spectators and he kept his minimal knowledge of the game to himself, occasionally just resorting to cheering Declan's name with a rush of white air from his mouth.

Around ten minutes in, Brendan felt a presence at his side and immediately his relaxation dissolved.

"I didn't know you were a fan," Steven said, blowing on his hands to keep them warm.

"I'm here to support my boy." Brendan didn't make eye contact.

They let the sounds of the game and the other spectators pass through their silence.

"So you know anything about rugby?" Ste asked, fidgeting with a piece of gum. It was like he'd made the commitment to start afresh, like Brendan had. Small talk. God, how he hated small talk.

Brendan took the pack off him and stole a piece. "Nothin'."

"Yeah me neither," Ste said and then just for effect hollered: "Go on you blues!"

Brendan couldn't help himself, he snorted. "Yeah, nice touch. You look like a native now." His ignorance endeared Brendan but he pushed it aside.

Ste tutted folding his arms in a sulk. "Well I've never done any sport, me. I was only ever any good at runnin'. Running away from shit." Ste flicked a patch of uneven turf with his foot.

Brendan glanced at him from the side. His cockiness had dried up; he looked like he'd opened the seal on a story he didn't want to tell.

"Yeah, I know the feeling. Why d'you think I came to England?" Brendan said, extracting his gaze and trying to focus on the game at play. "Always a place to run to."

A vulnerability resided in Steven that he hadn't seen before; not that he'd really discovered a great deal about him besides a consuming attraction. But he saw something then, something deeper and fragile; a history that Brendan could recognise. He looked over at him, skin and bones. A lanky maturity in the way he carried himself, like he'd dragged himself up from the gutters.

"Have you stopped?"

"What?"

"Running?"

They shared a long look between them. Brendan noticed a weariness in Ste's expression he hadn't seen before.

"I don't think so, no."

That night, Brendan made a new profile online. He'd lose himself in someone else. That was the only way he could escape and avoid hurting his son. Declan could never know the truth about his sexuality, let alone the residual intensity he felt for Steven.

But with the real object of his desire just metres away, it'd be a battle to avoid defeat.

* * *

_Ste_

Ste ambled out of bed and down the corridor to the bathroom. His throat was dusty dry from the pizza that evening and he carried a glass with him to fill. He had to walk past Brendan's bedroom and he felt a flutter in his chest. It wasn't in his control, he felt pulled there.

When he got to the bathroom, he stood staring at his reflection a while, running the cold tap and drinking a whole glass of water – the chill of it making him slightly breathless. When the tap stopped dripping he became aware of a sound in the room adjoining – Brendan's – although he couldn't make out what it was. He hung around for a moment, listening to the muffled noises before creeping out into the corridor and pressing his head against the door.

As soon as his brain caught up and he realised what the sound was, he jerked away. Through the door he could hear the trapped sounds of Brendan moaning, half-blunted cries. Ste's chest hammered with heat and curiosity. He was having sex? Who with? In the house with Declan down the corridor?

Ste couldn't stand there any longer listening; he opened the door in the smallest fraction. The noise grew a little louder as Ste pressed his gaze into the gap. Brendan was alone – naked and kneeling, masturbating beside his laptop. Ste gulped, lips falling apart. He watched for longer than he felt safe to. He couldn't see the screen and the pit of his stomach knotted with envy wondering if there was someone else behind that screen taking his place.

He pulled the door closed and rested back against the wall, body heaving. His skin tingled – toes curled, lips wet, cock pressing hard against his underwear. He steeled himself and headed back to Declan's bedroom.

He stirred. "You've been ages," he said.

Ste slid in beside him, kissing his mouth hungrily. Declan went with it and Ste pushed him onto his front, his desperation escalating. With his eyes closed, Ste buried himself inside him, stealing pleasure from Declan, his mind in the next room.

::: :::

"Here y'are," Ste said placing a freshly made omelette in front of Declan. "I made it in a separate pan from mine, no ham juice." He grinned.

Declan kissed him. "Did I tell you you're the perfect boyfriend today?"

"You can say it again," Ste said, tucking into his own breakfast. He yawned, excusing himself.

"I'm not surprised," Declan said, just above the sound of their eating. "What got into you last night?!" He didn't say it with his face crumpled, but Ste coloured knowing things weren't usually as non-verbal and animalistic as it had been last night.

It was right at that moment that Brendan emerged from upstairs and passed by their conversation. Ste felt the goosebumps prickle his skin. He hugged himself a little, trying not to notice the heady waft of Brendan's aftershave.

"I ain't complaining, it's just…a little warning next time. I ache all over."

"Who left this shit all over my kitchen?" Brendan asked, his face weathered from a restless night.

Ste leapt up. "Sorry, I'll clean it up." He flustered past Brendan and began clearing away whilst father and son glared at each other. Ste could hear the mutterings of their passive aggression before Declan excused himself for a shower.

Brendan stood beside him at the sink and Ste felt himself go hot all over, avoiding eye contact.

"You can't keep staying here," Brendan said flatly. "It's not working."

"I thought you'd have got over it by now," Ste said, scrubbing at the frying pan, water sloshing over the sink's lip. He wasn't over it, not even forcing himself to start fresh could work after the feelings he had the night before. "Found some other sap."

The change in tone hadn't gone unnoticed by Brendan. The caution and the boundaries and the niceties that they'd been practising seem to lift. A bitterness frosted in Brendan's eyes.

"Careful," Brendan said, leaning into his close space. "Now _you're_ beginning to sound jealous."

Their eyes locked. Brendan had him shuffled and pressed against the cabinets. The rise and fall of his chest, the way Brendan's t-shirt was tight enough to choke his torso, made Ste lose his concentration. He stammered, tongue too dry for his mouth.

"I heard you, last night, in your bedroom," he said, not sure how he was forming sentences. One of Brendan's arms was outstretched and just skimming the surface of his waist.

"Oh yeah?" Brendan said, wetting his bottom lip.

"You were…" Ste creased and realised just then their bodies were close enough to share ripples of heat.

"I was…?" Brendan lifted his head from one side to the other.

"You know what!" Ste said, snapping and breaking their dangerous proximity. He returned to the washing up, clattering the items around in the water.

Brendan smirked, a dark twist of nastiness in it. He didn't seem outraged at Ste's eavesdropping.

"Just so you know; on the webcam, he wasn't as good as you," Brendan said, into his ear. He lifted his index finger under the hem of Ste's t-shirt and along the exposed inch of skin at the base his spine.

"I don't want to know." Ste pulled down his t-shirt.

"Don'tcha?"

"No."

::: :::

"Are you sure you're okay to wait around?" Declan asked, pulling on his work uniform. "I thought dad would be out working but he's not so…"

Ste hoped Brendan would have the sense to go out. "I'll just stay up here, watch a few DVDs and crash out til you get home." Ste plastered on a smile and began leafing through the DVD collection.

"I'll try n'get back before two," Declan said passing Ste for a kiss on his way out.

Ste spent the evening holed up in Declan's room for most of the night, until he heard the front door slam and he felt free to cook. It wasn't like Brendan was a threat, but alone with him in the empty house again felt too dangerous. The attraction lingered in every moment together, it stayed with them like an itch begging to be relieved; even ignored it just stayed, getting near to scratching it made satisfaction tremor but the itch got greater until it grew to an obsession.

He returned upstairs only to hear Brendan come in and pour himself what Ste expected was a whiskey, seeing as that tended to be his chosen drink to numb himself. Ste let the movie finish and climbed into bed, listening to his own breathing and trying to ignore Brendan shuffling around in the kitchen downstairs. Eventually he heard him come up, sighing as he walked down the corridor. Ste stiffened in the middle of the bed, almost expecting Brendan to hover outside the door, but he didn't.

Ste's heart raced at dizzying speed. His mind drifted into forbidden fantasy. He imagined Brendan entering the room, stripped bare, ripping the covers back and pulling him across the bed on the rough of his knees and elbows. He closed his eyes, picturing the moment, tracing over his memories of the sensations of being with him. He touched himself trying to mimic the hold Brendan took of him.

The sheets became a rucked up mess underneath as he spent a restless few hours awake thinking about Brendan in the next room. He willed himself to think of Declan, what a kind and loving guy he was, but his mind always found its way back to the charged moment in the kitchen and the nag of jealousy he felt from the previous night.

::: :::

* * *

_Brendan_

He became aware, through dreams at first, of blood rushing to his dick. Then, as though no time had passed at all, the nuzzle of lips against his thighs. He clung to this lucid dream, hoping his ongoing sexual frustration wouldn't keep him from the climax of dream sex - as they often did – and buried his head into sleep. But he felt gradually pulled from it; the sensations intensified and when his consciousness stirred he realised he was being woken with the real heat of a man's mouth. For a moment longer than he should have, he groaned into its pleasure and didn't move. But before long his conscience snapped.

"Fuck! What are you doing?" he said, throwing back the covers, exposing Ste kneeling on the bed between his legs. He'd couldn't supress the lingering affection there and fighting all will, his fingers graced Ste's cheek.

"Brendan. I can't do this anymore, alright?" Ste said. His voice cracked, his tongue trembled over his bottom lip, trying to mask his fragility. "I want _you_. I need you." His lips lowered to kiss the underside of Brendan's cock.

Brendan grimaced, hiding his crumpled face in his hand. He couldn't think from his brain's screaming. He should throw Steven out, barricade himself, separate until things inevitably burnt out with Declan and he could start being a father again. Not the worse piece of shit imaginable, edging around the seduction of his boyfriend and charming desire out of him. He shouldn't relent, he shouldn't let Steven slide his body up and brush his length along Brendan's cock, he shouldn't rest his fingertips on Ste's bare spine and soothe him like the boy deserved sympathy. But he did, he did all of it. He let Ste glide on top, laying between his open thighs. He let Ste's molten velvet skin sigh under his hands, their lips meeting in a kiss that was warm and selfish. He was the worst.

Their mouths locked hungry and open and Brendan's palms skimmed Steven's body like he was the first flesh he'd touched in a lifetime. He cherished every stroke of him, sculpting the curve of his back in a smooth arch, laying wet and disastrous kisses of longing across his throat. He'd never wanted anything more; Steven's arse perched just above his cock.

Their morals untied without time to comprehend what they were committing themselves to. Brendan sheathed with protection, buoyed with ease by the tidal rocking of Ste's hips. Then Ste levered up onto his knees, kissing Brendan with unflinching confidence, forgoing any preparation and handled Brendan's dick, keeping eyes and mouth open, to break that last taboo. Ste fed Brendan inside him, shuddering as he accommodated him. Brendan's groan thundered his chest, rasping for an edge of sanity against the heady mania brought on by Steven's body atop of him. He rode with a feverish desperation, leaving Brendan numb to anything happening around their welded bodies.

He scorched every nerve in Brendan's body, the illicit thrill coursing through. Ste's captivating movements picked Brendan apart and he clutched hold of him, reaping the forbidden lusts of his body with the upward thrusts of his pelvis. Steven could just about cry a nonsensical _fuck_ sound, Brendan's orgasm ripping every last shred of his composure to pieces, slicking them both with sweat and cum.

Steven laid flat on top of him, festering in their guilt and the deep breaths of a come down. Brendan wanted to roll him over, fuck him again until his body buckled in bliss; he was too good to waste. But their bodies slotted in the curves and spaces of each other, Ste's head turned against his chest. Brendan's arms came around his body. There was no return; this was far too intimate.

Silence settled and Brendan assumed Steven was asleep, lulled into the warm comfort of his body. But then he spoke, his voice fragile like a lost child's.

"Brendan?" His imploring half muffled by the proximity of his lips to Brendan's chest hair. "What we just did…" Steven edged up Brendan's body, skin sticking and tried to look into his eyes.

"Don't."

Steven shook his head. "It were always gonna happen," he said. "One way or another, you and me."

Brendan knew all too clearly what he meant and he shifted his gaze away from the bluntness of Ste's expression. Did it absolve them of guilt if they put this moment down to inevitability? Fate? It wasn't like the universe played a hand in adultery and casual sex. But something about the risk involved meant the line they'd just crossed had to mean more than just sex. The rolling thought process that lead Brendan to that conclusion terrified him.

"Do you regret it?" Steven said. He raised up on his arm, cooler air rushing into the space between them. His lips were full and downturned.

Brendan touched his face, running fingers across his jaw. It shook with fragility. His fingers glided down the nape of his neck and to the base of his spine. They slid like his skin was liquid.

"No. How could I?" Brendan's words were lost as he pressed his mouth to Steven's lips.

"I'll end it," Ste said, wrapping his arms around Brendan's body. "Tomorrow. I will and I-"

Brendan pressed a finger to Ste's lips. "Stop talking," he said. Whether Ste ended things with Declan or not, it wouldn't mean they could be together. He didn't want to break the boy's blissful naivety, so clung to him, kissing the hollow warmth of his neck.

They didn't sleep. Brains savaged by guilt, they lapsed into slow and possessive kisses and Brendan made love to him again, pleating his body into shapes that gave him the most tender pleasure. In the early hours their dewy skin separated and Brendan told him to shower.

"You better get yourself into his bed," Brendan said, biting back on his resentment.

"I'll get myself home." Ste stretched, sat on the edge of the bed, oblivious to the tension. "I can't sleep next to him when you and me…"

"He'll suspect something."

"Why would he?" Brendan said. "Do what you want, Steven."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means go from my bed back to his and I'll see you in the morning, where we can just pretend it was a wet dream." Brendan rolled over in bed, turning his back on Ste. "Goodnight Steven."

Brendan heard his intake of breath – the hurt and the disbelief - and then he left the bedroom. Brendan was sent off to sleep listening to the sound of the shower and wrapped in the hot body smells of his bed.

::: :::

Brendan didn't see Ste in the days that followed and made no attempt to speak to him. Of course he wanted him, the sickness about the whole situation twisted inside him like a rotting growth of roots. It hadn't been a mistake; it'd pumped him with life, a fully-charged bliss – but that came with a price. Unlike Steven, he knew they couldn't make a habit of it. It could never happen again. He'd toyed with the idea of reigniting their virtual affair, but that was seedy and would make him feel so much worse. It had gone too far and he'd let it.

He couldn't look Declan in the eye, knowing how great his betrayal was. It was only one night when Brendan had gloomed his way through half a bottle of whiskey and Declan came home from work early, crashing in through the door, that they were forced to talk.

"Easy!" Brendan said when he looked up to see Declan had almost downed a bottle of lager and was opening the next.

"Give it a rest dad!" He said, tossing the metal lid into the bin. He cursed under his breath when he realised there were only three beers in the fridge.

"No Steven with you tonight?" Brendan asked. He remembered him; spread and flushed across the sheets. For a lad so slight he could cry out and come for England. He screwed up the sheets between his fingers, his rib cage thumping and his head assaulting the bed from side to side. Brendan had given him large hand-print marks on his thighs and bitten the join of flesh where his buttocks met his legs. But it was that look in his eyes when their gaze met – the adoration and intensity – that was what Brendan carried with him, tortured himself with.

"We broke up, okay dad? We're finished. Are you happy now?" Declan was about to head upstairs, had his foot on the bottom step.

Brendan sat upright, the glass almost slipping free from his grasp.

"Finished? It's over?"

"That's what finished means, ain't it?"

Brendan rubbed the side of his head, nausea taking hold. If Declan had known the truth, he wouldn't have come back to the house. He raced through logic and reason, grappling for a hold on his fatherly responsibilities.

"I…I'm sorry to hear that, son."

"Sorry? You hated him."

Brendan slumped, watching the swirl of liquid in the glass. "I didn't hate him. I found it _difficult_."

Declan shook his head.

Brendan pressed his fingertips to his temples. "Not cos of that. Not."

Declan stormed past him and sat on the sofa, perched on the edge of the sofa like he was about to interrogate. "Go on then, why?"

"It's complicated."

Declan's silence seemed to indicate that he thought Brendan would never tell him and he opened up the third and final beer.

"And before you start slagging him, it was me that ended it."

Brendan's muscles clenched and he braced his expressions. "Why?"

"Nick came back into town and…"

"Nick?"

Declan shifted, avoiding eye contact. "You remember my friend Nick? We were more than just that and…well, it ended. But I got talking to him again and…" He cringed. "I can't talk to you about this stuff."

Brendan rested his glass down shakily. "Go on."

"Last Tuesday," - Declan continued, missing the way Brendan's face flashed with the briefest of horrors – "Nick came into the bar and just seeing him again made me realise that, well Ste's great and all but he's not Nick."

"You cheated on him?"

"No." Declan shook his head. "So are you gonna crack open the champagne or what?"

"I told ya. It's complicated."

"What's complicated about it? You hate me being gay."

"You couldn't be more wrong."

"What is it then?"

Brendan's face tightened, head rolled and looped from side to side. He looked up to see Declan's stare boring into him.

"Dad?"

"I'm gay." Brendan cleared his throat, coughing over the words. "I'm gay."

Declan took a short intake of breath, his eyes tracking the room. He moved to speak several times but failed. It looked as though his mind rolled over the same questions he'd been asked, the same confusions he'd dealt with.

The talk was brief. Unenlightening. Brendan could tell him very little without feeling the foundation of the truth was built on a lie that would devastate him.

* * *

_Ste_

"Service!" Ste called, temper flaring. "Service!"

He got stared down by the stroppiest bitch of a waitress. "Keep your hair on, Stevo."

He hurled himself back into the kitchens and finished off the final two desserts, calling out to Colin that his break was starting and he was putting this down as overtime. He wasn't usually this arsey with Colin and he expected a warning for his attitude but fuck it, he needed to vent.

The stroppy bitch sauntered into the kitchen. She adopted a snooty voice. "Table nine wants to pay his compliments to the chef."

Ste rolled his eyes. "Whoop de fucking do. I'm busy."

Colin glared. "Get out there, take a bow and then go sort yourself out, I'm sick of the attitude. I'll finish those desserts."

Ste bundled his apron off and headed out the swinging door into the main restaurant, shaking himself into composure and heading for the direction of table nine. Brendan sat, taking the last sip of an espresso and Ste would have stopped and turned on his heel if Brendan hadn't spotted him first.

"The steak was perfection."

"I'll thank the cow for ya." Ste moved to leave.

"Steven. Please. Let me buy you a drink."

They ended up in the same café as before, stuck in a window seat with a world of early Christmas shoppers whirling past. Brendan relented and let him order his own drink this time and baulked at Ste's accusation that he'd only just finished an espresso.

"How's things?"

"Have you come here as some sort of joke?" Ste asked. "I mean, you fuck me and then get funny and then I don't hear from you at all."

"Jesus Christ, what did you expect – an invitation to move in? I screwed my son's boyfriend and you think we can just carry on like everything's normal? You know it'd happen again. And again."

"Well it's over now. Me and him."

"I know." Brendan avoided his gaze. "I told him that I'm gay."

Ste settled forward in his chair, picking at his fingernails. "So did you come to see me because…?"

Ste watched as Brendan pinched a sugar cube between his fingers and crushed it. "No."

"Right."

"Steven, how did you think this would work?"

Ste shook his head lightly as if he was trying to convince Brendan of a hope. "It could. We could keep it a secret for now and…"

"No."

"He doesn't want me." Ste's fingers touched the back of Brendan's hand. "And you and me, we want each other." His hand rested just in front of Brendan's.

"It ain't that simple." Brendan ran his thumb across Ste's knuckles. "If Declan wasn't involved then…"

"You'd be with me?"

Brendan's smile lifted faint lines around his mouth. "You have to ask?"

He gave Brendan a stiff smile; the one that could have been. Then something distracted him out of the window, someone staring right into where they were sat, their hands touching.

Declan.

* * *

_Brendan_

Ste jumped up from the table and Brendan could barely keep up with the events as they spiralled into focus. He darted outside to where Declan stood eye to eye with Steven, their eyes white and Declan pale and raged.

"What's goin' on?" he said, squaring up to Ste and looking over to Brendan's arrival with a face morphed in disgust and confusion. "You and my dad?"

"Declan, let's talk about this at home," Brendan said trying to step forward and place a hand on his shoulders.

"No no no. Tell me what's going on!"

"What are you even doing here?" Ste asked, as if that mattered. Brendan sensed he was trying to distract from the bigger issue. Brendan's fear manifested in being distracted by the smallest details, like the panic that he'd left his phone in the café – he hadn't – or the increasing commercialisation of Christmas that crept earlier and earlier every year.

"I came to the restaurant to see you, to apologise about being a dick and then I see the two of ya! Holding hands! Fucking holding hands!"

"Declan it's not…"

"Don't tell me 'It's not what it looks like' dad! Okay?! You've given me bullshit my whole life about being straight, you owe me the truth for once."

People in the street were beginning to take notice and Brendan tried to edge them over out of the main flow of the street. Ste looked at him uneasily, a bolt of panic in his eyes. It would be so simple to run.

"Okay. Okay." Brendan's voice had a nervy scratch to it, like a song on too fast a speed. It was like if he got the words out faster they would hurt less. "We met months ago, Steven and I. Before you and him were together. We met online."

Declan dropped to a bench in the street, his eyes bloodshot and body lurching in weakness.

"We had one night together. That was all." Brendan keep glancing at Ste to back up his story and to make it clear that his words were just the half-truth to save them both, selfishly.

"You had sex?" He was looking at Ste this time.

"Yeah." Ste's mouth trembled.

"And then?" Declan said, spitting at Brendan.

"Then you two got together and we did everything to stay away."

"You're disgusting."

"It was once."

"You were with Nick!" Ste shot back and Brendan snapped his head round, irritated at Ste's interjection, like it made their betrayal any more palatable.

"I didn't fuck him!" Declan cried, shoving Ste and squaring up to Brendan. "You're my dad!"

"I'm so sorry."

"I'm your son." Declan wiped tears from his eyes.

"I know. I don't expect you to forgive me."

Declan almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, crying onto his sleeve. Brendan mouthed at Steven to go, and they shared a crushing last glance, before Brendan sat beside his son and consumed enough guilt to make him sick for days.

* * *

_Ste_

Months on, into the New Year, Colin got sick and Ste assumed the role of head chef. Devising new menus kept him busy. They filled the gap and he worked for long, uninterrupted stretches. He was doing well; even the bitch waitress realised she had to stay on her best behaviour.

He'd stayed with an old school friend, Amy, over Christmas and settled into very middle class festivities with her parents. He was grateful that she didn't ask about his love life and was preoccupied in the breakdown of her parent's marriage.

He didn't hear from Brendan at Christmas.

Or New Year.

And then his birthday arrived and after a pathetic number of cards and texts, he received one from a number he didn't know.

_I think it's your birthday. And if it is: Happy Birthday. I think about you all the time_.

He left it for days, making himself sleepless over its mystery and who he hoped it would be. Then he got drunk one night with a guy at the restaurant, who made a pass at him. Ste had pushed him away and gone home and text back to the unknown number.

_I think about you too._

His phone lit up with a call.

* * *

_Brendan_

"We talk. Well, we've been civil. We were never, you know, close."

Declan had packed and caught a flight home the same October he discovered everything. He came back to England eventually, moving in with Nick and resitting his exams. Brendan knew things were unrepairable but he refused to shut off what little was left of their relationship. He phoned once a fortnight and waded through small talk. That was now, after a month of silence. Once forgiveness was ruled out, they fought to be anything other than strangers.

"I'm glad you're talking."

"He seems happy. With Nick. Makes me feel less of a cunt."

"That's something."

"Yeah, selfish."

"I don't think so," Ste paused on the other end. "But I'm just as much to blame."

"You know what they say: Takes two to…fuck someone over."

"I think it's tango."

Brendan's laugh was silent. He sighed. "I miss you."

"Me too."

"So let's do it."

"What?"

"Let's be together. I can't lose my son and you."

Brendan could hear Steven's long, thoughtful breathing on the other end. He knew they could never have a simple, easy relationship – that the history of it would shadow the future – but Declan had expected their reunion and Brendan's winter nights alone had been self-inflicted penance for his mistakes. He'd pay for them with the big man. Steven wasn't something he could give up on. He never had been.

"Yeah, okay. Let's be together."


End file.
